


Be Somebody

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Awkward Barry, Bad Puns, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Not Beta Read, Oliver is an ass in this, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, Protective Leonard Snart, Snark, Tags Are Hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-15 16:55:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 47,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5792488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barry snorts, “keep your ego to a minimum, Snart, I throw out your slips because I think the fact that you called Mick Rory a ‘dirty anal fuck stain’ in the middle of English hilarious. No charity involved, I don’t care about you, I care about preserving the ability to call people who are stupid stupid, stupid,” he says, thankfully able to follow his own logic at that last bit.<br/>Snart does too, thankfully, because he wasn’t going to repeat himself. </p><p>“Thought you said I was smart?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.</p><p>“Intelligence exists in multiple ways and apparently you’re only good at math,” Barry says, spinning on his heel and walking away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GoodSourceofFiber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoodSourceofFiber/gifts).



> This fic is named after Be Somebody by Thousand Foot Krutch, which honestly is like the greatest song ever because it applies to like basically every ship I have.

After all the lights go down, I’m just the words you are the sound  
A strange type of chemistry, how you’ve become a part of me  
And when I sit alone at night, your thoughts burn through me like a fire  
You’re the only one who knows who I really am

Be Somebody, Thousand Foot Krutch

When Barry met Leo he would say that he was like a stray cat. He was lonely, confused, in desperate need of love and attention, but most of all he was angry at everything. Like a stray cat Leo needed help but he was too suspicious of everything around him to let anyone in to do anything about his situation. And like a cat he’d attack just about anyone who tried.

Barry was on his way back home from work, taking the shorter way home despite Joe’s insistence that he go around this particular part of town. He’d heard the rumors, seen the news, but he hadn’t seen anything here that couldn’t happen anywhere else. Hell, half the things that happened in this particular part of town happened in the Queen Mansion and no one was telling him to avoid that. Well, Joe did, but that’s because he hated Oliver with a fiery passion not because of the regular crimes that happened to be committed there. He supposed that was why he was surprised when he was walking down the street and witnessed a kid about his own age, which he suppose didn’t make him much of a kid, literally get tossed out of his house.

He suspected there was a lot of yelling involved too but by the time he removed his headphones the door to the house had been slammed shut and the guy was wiping his nose on his shirt. “Are you okay?” he asks, carefully stepping closer. Upon closer inspection he recognized the tossed figure as Leonard Snart, whom was well known for his quick temper, puns, sticky fingers, and his fierce protectiveness over his sister. Probably not someone Barry would have talked to on any other occasion simply out of fear that he’d be the next one Snart punched, he didn’t do so well with bullies, but even bullies needed help sometimes.

“Fuck off,” is the snarled response and okay, so Barry should have seen that coming but it still threw him off.

“Um,” he says, sounding much smaller than he had a moment ago, “okay. I… uh, hope you’re okay,” he says quietly and he ducks his head, eager to scurry home.

“Hey kid,” he hears Snart call from behind him so he turns around.

“You do realize I’m your age, right?” he asks. They were in the same grade if memory served, and his memory was never wrong except in the convenient case of his mother’s murder.

“Whatever. You’re the one that lives with that cop, right?” he asks, walking closer as he asks the question. It’s an intimidation tactic and Barry knew it, he’s dealt with enough people using their size and general mean vibe against him to recognize it immediately.

Snart stops right in from of him, glaring him down as he does so. “Yeah, I live with a cop,” Barry says, looking back at Snart and resisting the urge to take a step back. He wasn’t going to be cowed by some asshole, not again.

“Then I hope you know to keep your mouth shut about this,” Snart says, vaguely gesturing to his house.

Barry laughs harshly, “oh. You thought I’d say something. I might live with a cop but I don’t have some romanticized notion that they’re always the heroes and the good guys or whatever. I’m not a moron, I know how the cops treat people they think are a nuisance and this entire neighborhood is a nuisance for them. I wouldn’t have said anything based off that alone, no need to try and intimidate me into keeping my mouth shut when nothing would come of it anyways,” he says. He had long ago given up on his hope in the police, not that he didn’t think Joe was a genuinely good person and police officer, but he had a lot of preconceived notions of certain people and it didn’t lend itself well to police work. He wished that wasn’t true but it was so. No point in denying it.

Snart takes a step back and looks Barry up and down, “well congratulations, kid, you just got a lot more interesting. What made you so jaded, shouldn’t living with a cop make them the best thing ever?” he asks in a condescending tone.

Barry rolls his eyes, “I’m not a kid, one. Two, I have eyes and life experience, I know how cops treat people they don’t think are worthy of their time, living with a cop doesn’t make that any less crappy. Three, if this is you attempting to have a conversation I think you need to take a class or something because your basic conversational skills suck,” he says.

He doesn’t know what to expect from that and he largely suspected he wouldn’t win a fight if it came to that; he wasn’t particularly good at fighting. Or much anything else physical. He’s surprised when Snart laughs, though it isn’t a pretty sound, more like Barry’s harsh laugh from earlier than a noise of genuine amusement. “And here I thought you were some pathetic idiot who followed Oliver Queen around, looks like I underestimated you, kid,” Snart says, smiling in a way that certainly wasn’t flattering.

He fucking resented that, he did, because he did _not_ follow Oliver Queen anywhere. “Well it looks like I misjudged you too, I figured maybe I’d be nice and I didn’t really expect you to care but I didn’t expect you to be a total asshole either. You’d think you would have learned to treat people nicely but I guess not,” Barry snaps, earning a hard glare from Snart.

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?” he grinds out.

“Exactly what you think it means, don’t play stupid, it doesn’t suit you,” he says.

Snart’s eyes narrow, “you don’t know enough about me to know whether or not stupid suits me, according to the old man it suits me fine,” he snaps.

Barry resists flinching but only barely. “Well the ‘old man’ abuses kids; I don’t think his opinion is worth shit. And I don’t need to know anything about you to know you’re smart, no one stupid can get out of detentions the way you do, and your GPA is impressive to say the least,” he says.

“The fuck do you know about my GPA?” Snart snaps.

He rolls his eyes, “I volunteer in the office, idiot, you can’t possibly think you manage to negotiate your way out of all those detentions you rack up. I throw half of them out before anyone sees them,” he says.

Snart looks thrown, “why?” he asks, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

“Because you punched Tony Woodward in the face that one time and I’m not a fan. I know I shouldn’t use my office powers for evil but Tony Woodward is an actual Disney villain and I didn’t think you deserved to suffer for making him suffer. Also you called Hartley Rathaway a cunt once, crude and a little offensive, but I don’t like him either. I’m pretty sure you stole his car once too, which, awesome, but only because he sucks,” he says, rambling because he was nervous and still sort of pissed off.

“You’ve been tossing my detention slips because I was mean to your bullies? Man I wish I knew about that earlier, I’ve been looking for a reason to punch Rathaway. But I don’t need your help kid, keep your efforts to yourself,” he says, apparently completely unaware of his contradiction.

“It’s just detention slips, and you only get half of them for pointing out the teachers are dumb and it isn’t your fault its true so it’s not a big deal,” Barry says, “you should probably focus on not being a giant asshole, not detention slips.”

“Keep out of my slips, kid,” Snart snaps at him.

“I’ll do what I want,” Barry says, fighting Snart on it for some reason. Truthfully he could care less about Snart’s slips, he just didn’t think he deserved a detention for saying Singh was ‘a level of stupid that is incomprehensible on the best of days’ because it was true. Also the comments were funny most of the time, he figured he’d cut the guy a break.

“Well I don’t need your charity so keep it to yourself,” Snart snaps.

Barry snorts, “keep your ego to a minimum, Snart, I throw out your slips because I think the fact that you called Mick Rory a ‘dirty anal fuck stain’ in the middle of English hilarious. No charity involved, I don’t care about you, I care about preserving the ability to call people who are stupid stupid, stupid,” he says, thankfully able to follow his own logic at that last bit.

Snart does too, thankfully, because he wasn’t going to repeat himself. “Thought you said I was smart?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Intelligence exists in multiple ways and apparently you’re only good at math,” Barry says, spinning on his heel and walking away.

*

People were fucking boring to say the least and Leonard, for one, was god damn sick of it. He had long ago figured them out, figured out how to manipulate them, use them, steal from them, and generally use them to his advantage. He had taught Lisa all his tricks too because she needed to know how to survive and he would be damned if his little sister got taken advantage of, not that he wouldn’t kill whoever did it because he sure as fuck would. Hell, _she_ would and he’d help her cover it up like a good older brother.

Barry Allen threw him for a fucking loop though because the kid was the total opposite of what he thought he was. Barry was a pretty weak person on the surface, that friend of his Iris fought all his battles for him, he followed Oliver Queen around like a lost fucking puppy even though he didn’t give a shit about Barry, and not once had he ever seen Barry do anything that suggested he existed contrary to his opinions. Until he met him after his jackhole father threw him, literally, out of the house.

Then he had to rethink everything because Barry Allen didn’t take any shit and that ran contrary to everything he knew about the guy. And he threw out half his detention slips for no reason, that was curious too. After Barry walked off with his dignity in tact he made it his business to know everything about Barry because he didn’t just misjudge people like that, he couldn’t afford to.

He makes his way to Mick’s, hoping he would let him in after the incident Barry had mentioned. He hadn’t meant to lose hid patience, really, but Mick was fucking stupid and it was painful to listen to him sometimes. The only reason he kept the guy around was because he was nice enough to let him in when his father kicked him out. Thankfully Mick was feeling generous and he lets him in despite having lost his temper on him the day before.

“You remember that Barry Allen kid, right?” he asks as they head to Mick’s room, which was thankfully clean. He couldn’t fucking stand messes, a result of being beat every time he made one, so he had problems with people who didn’t keep their things meticulously neat.

“The one that’s dating that asshole Queen, right?” Mick asks. He resists the urge to roll his eyes because Mick wasn’t being particularly stupid, he was just asking normal questions.

“That’s the one,” he says.

“Sure, what about him?” Mick asks.

“He seem the type to stand up for himself in any way?” he asks.

Mick snorts, “fuck no, did you miss the ‘dating Oliver Queen’ bit? The guy’s a right ass to everyone around him, the hell made you think the kid could stand up for himself?” he asks. A reasonable question indeed.

“The fact that he all but tore me a new asshole less than a half hour ago,” he says.

Mick stops and turns around, “what’d you do?” he asks, full well knowing his reputation was well earned.

“Nothing, kid threw me for a loop, I wasn’t expecting resistance. Now I’m intrigued,” he says slowly, thinking things over in his head.

Mick nods, “what do you want me to do?” he asks, naturally falling into the place that he had long ago carved out for him.

“Stick your ear to the ground, let me know what you find on him,” he says and Mick nods, going off to do as he was told. He nods to himself and remembers why he put up with Mick’s stupidity, the guy might be painful to spend time around but he knew how to follow orders and he was loyal to a fault. Rare qualities, not ones he should throw away over a few stupid remarks.

He resolved to make it up to Mick with breakfast. The best way to win Mick Rory over was with food.

*

Barry always gets to homeroom early as a result of Joe dropping him and Iris off early before heading to work. Usually he used that time to sleep some more before class and today was no different. What was different, however, was the person who drops their stuff in the desk beside him and flops loudly into the seat.

Leonard Snart gives him an appraising look before speaking, “sleepy looks good on you, Scarlet,” he says.

Barry frowns, “what?” he asks, confused on where the new, but decidedly improved, nickname came from.

Snart gestures to his shirt, which did happen to be red, “I take back sleepy looking good on you,” he says.

“Fine, whatever,” he mumbles and moves to put his head back on his desk to fall asleep again but sadly the bell rings and the teacher walks in, Iris shortly behind. She looks over at Barry and frowns when she finds Snart in her seat and he shrugs helplessly at her, what was he supposed to do? Iris looks around and takes the only empty seat, one next to Mick Rory, while making disgusted faces at Barry. Yeah, Mick Rory was not the greatest desk partner. He sat next to the guy in math the year before and he was fairly certain his contacts shriveled on his eyes because the smells Mick Rory produced were so nasty.

“She looks unimpressed,” Snart comments.

“Anyone who would have to sit next to Mick would be upset with it, the guy is like gas central and I know it’s a normal bodily function but I had to get new contacts. You must nose blind of something,” he says, rubbing his eyes in an attempt to perk up.

Snart laughs, “oh Mick doesn’t pull that shit with me, he knows better,” he says. Barry wanted to ask what that meant but attendance was being taken and he had to focus on that or he’d fall back asleep again.

That wasn’t the last time he saw Snart that day either. He didn’t even notice that he had several classes with the guy and now he was mad that Snart was funny in all the classes he wasn’t in. He swore the guy was following him around but at lunch he seems to disappear. “What’s with Snart?” Iris asks, taking a bite of her sandwich.

Barry shrugs, bent over his text book, “no clue. Ran into him on the way home last night and had a weird conversation that ended in me calling him an asshole so I don’t know why he’s so obsessed,” he says.

Iris’ eyebrows shoot up, “you called Leonard Snart and asshole? You do know about his reputation, right?” she asks.

“Yeah, I know about it but he didn’t seem too keen on punching me so I guess it doesn’t matter now,” he says, more focused on his science homework.

“I can’t believe you called Snart and asshole but you won’t call Oliver an asshole, he deserves it,” Iris says, transitioning terribly from one subject to another.

Barry sighs and sits up properly, “for the millionth time, Iris, my relationship with Oliver is none of your business,” he says curtly. He knew that Oliver was an asshole, and he really should give the guy up, he was never going to change but he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he would. Laurel felt the same way and they both knew no one else understood them, they didn’t even understand themselves. Hell, half the time they couldn’t even keep track of which one of them Oliver was dating that week, him, her, both, or neither. The only upside to his stupid and frankly crappy relationship was that Laurel was actually a pretty good friend and even though they both knew they deserved better they at least understood why they both still clung to Oliver even if they couldn’t explain it in words.

“Just saying,” Iris mumbles around her bread. Yeah, like she did every chance she got. He understood, he wouldn’t want Iris to date Oliver either, but her constantly questioning him did nothing to dissuade him from dating the guy. Like reverse psychology, everyone told him not to do it so he did, but with a little more to it.

Iris remains silent for the rest of lunch but Barry feels her gaze on him, silently judging him and he can’t help but feel annoyed. He keeps it to himself though because he knew she was just trying to be a good friend. When the lunch bell rings he’s happy to run off to a place where Iris couldn’t judge him.

*

He forgets about Snart almost completely until the end of the day. Woodward, the asshole, had decided for whatever reason that today seemed like a good ‘pick on Barry day’ and so he was harassing Barry by his locker.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Barry asks, “you insist on telling me how worthless I am all the time but you constantly go out of your way to waste your time and efforts being rude to me. Seems kind of counter intuitive, don’t you think?” he asks.

Woodward looks like he’s going to step in to beat the hell out of him again, which wouldn’t be anything new, but Snart steps in front of him, “I kicked your ass once, don’t make me do it again,” he says in a cool tone Barry never would have been able to manage.

“Oh fuck off Snart,” Woodward snaps, “and get out of my way.”

Snart doesn’t move, “no,” he says.

“Fine,” Woodward says and takes a swing at him. _Yikes_.

Snart was quick though and he ducks the fist, quickly recovering and punching Woodward square in the face, “that’s what you get for stepping out of line. Leave Barry alone,” he says and Tony sputters something Barry doesn’t hear, but he stumbles away angrily so he doesn’t care. Snart turns to face him, “now we’re even, Scarlet,” he says and he walks off.

“What the hell was that about?” Iris asks, running up to him as the students around them disperse to spread the gossip

“I don’t know,” Barry admits, “he said that we’re even now but I didn’t even know he owed me,” he says.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So initially I meant to write Oliver as a bit of an ass but he sort of came out straight up abusive, so a warning for that.

Some people would probably consider his relationship with Laurel was weird and maybe in some weird alternate universe they would hate each other but here they actually found one another enjoyable. What they didn’t find enjoyable was the weird love triangle they were in and they couldn’t figure out if Oliver knew they knew about each other or if he just didn’t care. They assumed the latter, well, Laurel did, Barry was certainly the more optimistic of the two. Laurel sits back in her seat, “I can’t wait to go to law school across the country, then I can get out of all this shit,” she says, blowing her bangs out of her face.

Well, at least she didn’t pull a Sarah and go to another continent and never come back. Barry was pretty sure she sent letters but that was about it. “Lucky you. I’m probably stuck here for life,” Barry says, wrinkling his nose.

“Why though? And why be a forensic scientist? I thought you had a weird love hate relationship with cops,” Laurel says.

Because his life was consistently more complicated than it needed to be and sometimes adjusting to the bell curve sucked so he stuck with the curve he had already adjusted to, not that Laurel would understand that. She was very much a ‘get what needs to be done done’ kind of girl and Barry admired that, really, she was genius at either leaving emotions out of it or using emotion to her advantage. Barry was a god damn messy conglomerate of confusion, frustration, and a general sense of dread for the future. “It’s just easier that way. And I decided on forensic science because cops might lie and overlook things but the evidence doesn’t, you can’t claim someone’s lying where everything at the scene backs up their story,” he says. He didn’t tell Joe that though, he just let the man believe he somehow influenced him to go into a policing career.

It wasn’t that he didn’t love Joe, he did, the man had done so much for him and Barry appreciated it really. But he didn’t much appreciate that lack of faith Joe consistently had in him and sometimes in Iris, it was just hurtful.

“You ever considered that maybe your problems stem from living down the road from the prison your father is in? I mean I get wanting to be close to him, really, but you’ve pretty much had no choice but to stew in it for years and maybe you should like… get away or something. See how things go. Do like a summer internship or something to test the waters so you know what it’s like. And you’d make a great forensic scientist even if I still think your career choice makes no sense because the forensic guys are just as biased as the cops, but if anyone was the exception it would be you,” she tells him meaningfully. He smiles and his cheeks heat up a bit in a light blush. Oliver thought that was cute, how easily he blushed, but he thought it was embarrassing.

“The summer internship would have been a good idea if this didn’t happen to be the year I was graduating so now I have no time. And thanks Laurel, I appreciate that,” he says. Their friendship was a weird one he knew but there was no sense in being mad at Laurel for Oliver’s transgressions and she had been easily swayed to his side, thus starting a strange but beautiful friendship.

“Oh look at that, Oliver text. Wants to know if I’m busy tonight,” she says as Barry’s phone buzzes.

“I literally got the same text word for word,” he says, irritated. How often this happened he had no idea, both he and Laurel had jobs to it was reasonable to assume that at least one of them would be busy at any one time.

“Asshole,” Laurel snaps, slamming her phone on the table. “Barry, put that phone down, what are you doing?” she asks, snatching his phone out of his hand.

“I was going to tell him I was busy, which I am, I have a project I have to work on with Cisco,” he says in his defense.

“Who cares? He literally just text us the same booty call, he can suffer in silence,” she says, sticking his phone in her pocket.

“That’s mean,” Barry says, somewhat distressed. Just because Oliver was an asshole didn’t mean they needed to be, they were better than that or at least he thought so.

“Again Barry, who cares? Do I need to remind you _again_ that we got the same booty call? What makes him think he can treat us like this?” she snaps.

“Probably the fact that we let him?” Barry says, “I mean neither of us has dumped him even though we both know we should,” he says, playing with his coffee cup.

“We don’t ‘let’ him do shit, Barry, why is it our fault he does this? It shouldn’t matter if we stay with him or not, we don’t deserve this. Even if we did leave him he’d go off and do the same thing to someone else and then his behavior would be _their_ fault. At what point does Oliver end up taking the blame for his own damn actions? With your attitude never and that’s just bullshit,” she says angrily. It was a front, they both knew, to cover how she really felt. People liked to claim Laurel was a heartless bitch because she rarely showed an emotion that wasn’t anger but those people weren’t looking close enough. So she had a temper and she happened to be pretty cut throat when she wanted to be, and sometimes she had a tendency to ignore how that might affect other people, that didn’t make her heartless.

“I guess,” Barry says, only half believing her words. He understood what she was saying but they still stayed with him, didn’t that make them responsible in some way when they could just leave? They both knew it was irrational to stay so what was the point? That they both still cared about him, Barry guessed, but it still didn’t make sense to care about someone who obviously didn’t care about them.

“Hey,” Laurel says quietly, “its ok. Next year I’m sure we’ll all be over this crap and dating different people anyways,” she says.

Barry sighs, “and if I don’t want that?” he asks.

Laurel drops her head into her hand, “I get it, I do. I don’t really want anything to change either, how fucked up is that?” she asks.

“Probably pretty fucked up,” Barry says. Everyone else seemed to agree and think he was some sort of door mat for putting up with it. He figured that everyone was at least sort of right because they could just go and they didn’t.

“Whatever. People think that the best way to have fun is get drunk and fuck each other instead of eating brownies and watching Mean Girls, what the hell do they know?” she asks and Barry can’t help but laughing. He enjoyed drinking as much as the next guy but he had to admit most people his age seem to indulge in excess, Oliver, for example.

“True, but if you throw in some chocolaty drinks it’s even better so I mean alcohol has its merits,” he says. Laurel tells him he has terrible taste in alcohol but she liked straight whiskey over cocktails so who really lacked taste here? Obviously not him.

*

Snart starts sitting next to him every day in home room and Iris was growing very tired of being abandoned with Mick. It wasn’t his fault though, he wasn’t in charge of where Snart sat and he wasn’t telling him to move for no reason, that was rude. Today though he was running late because he had snuck out the night before to go see Oliver, which Joe was bound to have known about, which meant he was definitely grounded but it was at least worth it.

He does, at least, get to class on time even if it was just barely and he’s surprised to find Iris in her newly acquired spot beside Mick and the spot next to Snart free. “Thanks for not abandoning me with Mick,” he says, sitting down with some caution. He was half expecting Snart to say he somehow owed him or something but he doesn’t, instead he looks Barry up and down.

“Up late last night?” he asks and Barry blushes.

“None of your business,” he mumbles, avoiding eye contact.

“I’ll take that, and the hickey on your neck, to be a yes,” Snart says. Barry was like eighty percent sure he turned the color of a cherry tomato at that, which earns a laugh from Snart. He was going to kick Snart’s ass. Okay so maybe he was just going to passively aggressively ignore Snart’s ass but still.

“So Scarlet, Queen any good in bed?” he asks after a few seconds of silence in which it became obvious Barry wasn’t answering, “must be if you put up with his shit.”

Barry turns red all over again, “oh my god, why do you even need to know this?” he hisses, embarrassed.

“Relax, I’m just trying to get a rise out of you,” Snart says, grinning because he damn well knew he had succeeded.

“Well you have now leave me be,” he says, angling himself away from Snart.

This earns him a laugh, “aww, don’t be like that, Scarlet,” he says.

“My name is Barry, like a ‘strawberry’, which happen to be the colour I just was. There, that should be more than enough association for you to remember my damn name,” he says.

“Sure thing, Scarlet,” Snart says and he laughs when Barry makes a frustrated noise.

*

He drops into his lunch seat annoyed because he had about eighty hours of homework due the next day, he had to work, and he had just gotten a call from Joe informing him that he was grounded for sneaking out. Again. Cisco looks up from whatever it was he was trying to build and Caitlin ignores him in favor of her own homework, “sup Barry, you look pretty pissed off,” he notes. Ahh, Cisco the ever observant one.

“I have like three years’ worth of homework and I’m grounded,” he mumbles. At least Iris was elsewhere with her own friends so she couldn’t berate him for sneaking out again.

“Well, Caitlin says, “maybe you should stop sneaking out and you wouldn’t be grounded,” she says, apparently picking up Iris’ slack.

“Aww come on; let a guy live, Cait. It looks like he had a good time,” Cisco says and winks. Barry turns bright red and Cisco moves on, “I can’t help you with the homework thing man, but at least you don’t have a clumsy lab partner who drops sulfuric acid on your dick. At least I got a date out of it, that’s right, let’s hear it for Cisco,” he says, grinning.

Caitlin squints at him, “you’re going on a date with someone who dropped a highly corrosive liquid in your lap? You’re an idiot,” she says, making a face at him before turning back to her homework.

Barry pulls out his own homework in the hopes that he could get something done before the end of lunch, “Oh come on,” Cisco says, “is no one happy for me? You guys suck,” he says, sticking a fry in his mouth.

“And why would you ask your clumsy lab partner out?” Barry asks, deciding to bite so poor Cisco felt some love.

“Because she’s hot, Barr, duh,” he says as if that was the most obvious thing in the world.

“I’ve decided that men are all idiots,” Caitlin says.

“Aw come on, only like ninety eight percent of us, give two percent of us credit, like Ronnie, he’s cute and he’s into you!” Cisco says, clapping his hands together. How he managed to always come back to this Barry had no idea but by now he was genius at it. Granted Ronnie and Caitlin would actually make a pretty good pair but he tended to stay out of it, he knew how annoying it could be when people meddled in personal relationships.

“Oh for gods sakes Cisco, follow Barry’s lead and stay out of it,” she tells him and Barry grins. It was nice that his efforts were noticed sometimes, particularly because this particular effort was a silent one.

“Okay but like Barry is totally not the one someone should go to for relationship advice, don’t look so offended Barry it’s true, I, however-”

“Have never been in a relationship,” Caitlin finishes, cutting Cisco off. “At least Barry has experience,” she says. Ha, take _that_ Cisco.

“I have a date,” Cisco says meaningfully, as if this changed anything. The two continue to bicker so Barry tunes them out and works on his science, which turns out to be far easier than expected. At least he didn’t have to do that when he got home, which probably wasn’t going to make all that much of a difference. On the plus side Joe was on nights tonight so he wouldn’t have to deal with him when he got home from work. He could expect a guilt free night and he was looking forward to it.

“Barry tell her she and Ronnie would be cute together,” Cisco says, drawing him back into an argument that he didn’t even realize was still happening.

“Caitlin you can date, or not date, whoever you want,” he says and Caitlin lets out a loud cheer before rubbing it in Cisco’s face. Cisco looks largely betrayed but Barry doesn’t feel too guilty about it because Caitlin was happy.

“You’re no fun, Barry,” Cisco says, wrinkling his nose at him.

“Am so, everyone says so,” he says and gets up to go to his next class, abandoning Cisco to his useless endeavors in getting Caitlin to date Ronnie.

*

He’s walking home from work while mentally cataloging what he needs to do before he went to bed when he runs into Snart again. “How is it possible that I only noticed you like maybe once a week before I saw you a few days ago and now you’re everywhere I go,” he says, crossing his arms and glaring at Snart, trying to figure him out.

“I’m good at simultaneously fitting in and sticking out depending on what effect I’m going for,” he says and that didn’t even make any sense.

“That isn’t possible,” Barry says. It would be pretty useful though because then he could sneak around without Joe noticing and Oliver would still notice him. Or Laurel, at this point he’d take either, they put enough time into the relationship. Hell, at this point he and Laurel had a relationship even if it was strictly platonic.

“Says you. Ten bucks says you won’t notice me at all tomorrow,” he says, smirking at Barry.

“I’ll take that bet,” Barry says, “but you’re going to owe me ten bucks,” he says, folding his arms across his chest.

“No I won’t,” Snart says with confidence, “but while we’re on the subject of bets, what do you know about a Cisco Ramon?” he asks.

Barry frowns, “what does Cisco have to do with bets?” he asks.

“Mick and I have a bet to see who will kill the sorry bastard first, Lisa, or me,” he says, grinning as Barry realized that _shit_ that date Cisco managed to score was with _Lisa Snart_ of all people. He quickly pulls his phone out and sends a flurry of texts off to Cisco telling him to abort the fucking mission because he was _dead_. “I’ll assume you know Cisco then?” Snart asks.

“Yes I know Cisco and if you could refrain from killing him that would be greatly appreciated, he’s a good person,” Barry says, not sounding nearly as sure of that statement as he should have.

“You probably think Oliver Queen is a good person,” Snart counters.

“No, well yes, but Cisco is a good person immediately, not like deep down somewhere in there like Oliver,” he says. Maybe he had too much faith in Oliver but he didn’t like to assume anyone was just inherently bad, everyone had at least a _little_ good in there somewhere. Except Claude Frollo, he was pure evil. And Tony Woodward. And probably Hartley Rathaway too but they were exceptions.

Snart looks amused, “really? He’s a good person immediately? Lisa said he asked her out after she dropped a corrosive liquid in his lap. Why would he do such a thing?” he asks, clearly knowing he had Barry there.

Because she was hot, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Snart that. “Can I have a different question?” he asks, avoiding eye contact.

“Let me guess,” Snart says slowly, “‘because she’s hot,’” he says.

“You aren’t supposed to ask questions you already know the answer to, it’s cheating,” Barry mumbles, hoping he didn’t just sign Cisco’s death warrant.

“Cheating is the only way to ensure you get anything done correctly. But I’m curious, I’ll let him live. For now,” he says, grinning at Barry.

Barry sighs and rubs his temples, “poor Cisco,” he says because he was pretty sure he had no idea what he was getting into when he asked Lisa out.

“I’d feel worse for him if it’s Lisa who decides he needs to go, she can be… _vicious_ ,” Snart says and that does not inspire Barry’s confidence. However when his phone buzzes with returned text messages from Cisco he realizes that he was totally late and he didn’t want Iris to rat him out to Joe.

“That’s nice and all but I have to go, I’m late and grounded so like… see ya,” he says and takes off.

He doesn’t miss Snart’s, “see ya, Scarlet,” he went though, as much as he would have liked to.

*

When he gets home Iris is, thankfully, not home so he heads to his room to do his homework and pretend like he wasn’t late at all. Cisco sends him no less than twelve SOS texts to which he tells Cisco that he has done this to himself, and if he didn’t want to be killed by Snart he should have went on a date with the younger Snart. Of course Cisco didn’t realize she was _that_ Lisa because he was, sometimes, too dumb for his own good and now he was frightened of death.

It wasn’t until a half hour later that Iris got home, looking flushed and happy and Barry really _really_ didn’t want to read into that. “You were home on time, right?” she asks, at least remembering her duties as his jailor.

Barry could have lied to get out of it but he doesn’t, instead choosing to face the consequences to his actions, “I was about a half hour late,” he admits.

Iris frowns, “you took the long way? You know I don’t care about that, I mean dad might but honestly I could care less,” she says.

He could have owed up again but he figured if Iris was happy to assume than okay, he’d take it. “I figured I shouldn’t press my luck,” he says.

“Well I’m your jailor for the next week and I don’t really care what you do; just get home before dad does. Unless it’s something Oliver related, then I’ll rat you out in a heartbeat because you deserve better even if you don’t know it. But who cares about that, guess what?” Iris says, jumping onto his bed in excitement, messing up his order.

“Iris you’ve squished my bio homework, and my math. Get off my stuff and then tell me your story,” he says, gently nudging her away with his foot.

She bats his foot away but shuffles herself around so she isn’t ass deep in his homework, “I met a guy,” she says, clapping her hands together excitedly.

“Um, great?” he asks, not sure where this was going.

Iris smacks his leg, “be excited for me you asshole, I met a guy and he seems nice!” she says.

“That’s great Iris,” he says, smiling at her, “where did you meet him?” he asks. Iris bites her lip and Barry raises an eyebrow, “ _Iris_?” he asks, giving her a look.

“Nowhere _bad_ per se, stop looking at me like that Barry, it isn’t creepy or anything,” she says.

“The fact that you have to preface this guy with ‘not a creep’ does not do anyone here any favors,” he says.

“Well I was checking some stuff out at Central college seems how dad stopped speaking to be for over a month when I said I wanted to be a cop and I ran into this guy-”

“Iris, you can’t date someone in college, that’s creepy,” Barry says. Besides, what self-respecting college student dated someone in high school outside the few established relationships that lasted?

“I’m graduating in a few months, and I’m eighteen, it is not creepy. Besides, Eddy is in first year so it isn’t _that_ big of an age difference anyways, like two years tops,” she says.

“And the catch?” Barry asks because there had to be one. Iris, while she had great taste in guys, never seemed to meet the right one at the right time.

“I may or may not have just sort of let him believe I was a college student too?” she says, her voice going up at the end as if that was a question.

“ _Iris_!” Barry says, “no, you can’t do that, you have to tell him you aren’t in college! How did that even happen?” he asks. How Iris always seemed to run into situations like this he had no freaking clue but her bad luck was considerably more impressive and convoluted than his.

“Well I was checking out some journalism stuff and he walked over and Barry he was _so cute_ and he just sort of assumed so I said I was transferring and I mean it isn’t like it’s a lie, I _am_ transferring, just not from another college,” she says, pouting at Barry.

“Iris! You tell him the truth right now, he needs to know! And that is so a lie, you can’t just let him believe you’re in college, it’s a terrible way to start a relationship,” he says.

Eventually Iris sighs, “fine, but only because you’re right and he’s really cute and nice,” she says, making faces at him.

Barry grins and leans forward, “so what’s he like?” he asks and Iris squeals, going off on a twenty minute rant.       


	3. Chapter 3

The next day Barry sits next to Snart as per usual but without the snarky banter he fades to the background. He doesn’t even realize that he hasn’t noticed Snart until lunch when he runs into a panicking Cisco. “Relax, man, are you okay?” he asks as Cisco all but hyperventilates.

Caitlin sighs, “no he’s not alright. Apparently his date with Lisa went well enough to warrant a few threats from your new friend Leonard Snart,” she says.

Barry frowns, “we aren’t friends,” he says. They barely even spoke, let alone on friendly terms. Actually they hadn’t even spoken that day at all and that was just weird. He didn’t even know if Snart went to any of the other classes they had together until he specifically thought about it and realized that he was, indeed, in his usual spot.

“How do you not die every time he talks to you?” Cisco asks.

“Well I don’t ask his sister out for one,” he says, “but he’s not really all that scary. He’s mostly just a lot of snark and squinting, I think he needs glasses,” he ponders aloud. Actually the amount of squinting Snart did probably meant that he _did_ actually need glasses. Huh. He’d have to bring that up to Snart at some point.

“Okay well I didn’t know that she was Snart’s sister and what the hell do you mean he’s not scary, I almost peed,” Cisco says, earning grossed out looks from both Caitlin and Barry.

“He really isn’t that bad, he’s just really snarky,” Barry says, unsure of where Cisco’s fear is coming from.

Caitlin frowns at him, “I think you might be interacting with him in a different way because Leonard Snart is definitely frightening. I don’t envy you, Cisco, this is why I don’t date,” she chirps, smiling pleasantly at him. And they were back to the to date/ not date Ronnie thing except this time Caitlin did it to herself.

“I’m not interacting with anyone differently; I just… talk to him. And he talks back, like a pair of normal humans do when they enter a conversation,” he says. There was nothing different about the way he and Snart did anything except maybe how they officially met, that was a little odd. “So how did your date with Lisa go?” he asks, changing the subject.

Apparently it went surprisingly well and if it wasn’t for Snart Cisco would ask for a second date but now he was terrified. Eventually Barry resolves to talk to Snart for Cisco because he was too frightened to do it himself like a proper adult.

He doesn’t, however, see Snart until the end of the day when he gets tracked down to his office volunteer time. He had been going through the detention slips again, tossing a few of Snart’s and one of Mick’s just to be nice, when Snart shows up. “You owe me ten bucks,” he says in way of an actual greeting.

Barry looks up from his desk duties and frowns for a second before he remembers their deal, “god damnit,” he mumbles and removes a ten from his pocket, handing it over. Snart takes it with a smug grin on his face.

“Leave the slips be, I like arguing with my teachers,” he says.

“Well Mick is too dumb to argue and who doesn’t enjoy someone who thinks Waller is a Nazi?” he asks. The woman was all sorts of nuts, assigning insane amounts of homework just to be a sadistic human and to make her students suffer in the worst ways possible.

“So now you’ve extended your slip-tossing to Mick?” Snart asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Only because his stupid comment was relevant this time,” he says, “otherwise he’d be off to the detention room.” If he was paying attention he probably would have realized he was flirting but he’s never really been known for being overly observant at the best of times.

“Well Scarlet, no need to be so accommodating,” Snart says, leaning closer to the counter Barry was sitting behind.

Barry’s stupid body betrays him by blushing, “s’not really accommodation so much as abuse of power but- oh, Hartley has a detention! Great, now Hartley has two detentions,” he says and carefully edits the ‘one’ into a ‘two’.

“You’re a real law breaker, Scarlet, just throwing the rules out the window,” Snart says, grinning at him.

“Oh shush, I throw out your slips, you should be grateful. So you’ve got your ten bucks and you’ve proven your point, apparently you can blend in and stand out, which I still think makes no sense, so what are you still doing here?” Barry asks, leaning forward.

“Maybe I find you interesting enough to stick around,” Snart says, cocking his head to the side and Barry’s stupid body has to up and betray him again by blushing.

He doesn’t get the chance to respond because Lisa bursts in the door then, “Len, stop robbing cradles, we have shit to do, let’s go,” she says.

“Well Scarlet, it’s been nice talking,” Snart says, winking at him and leaving.

“I’m like a year older than you!” he calls after Lisa because he was not a _baby_ and there were no cradles here to rob, damnit.

*

He had managed to sneak out again; this time undetected thankfully, but sneaking back in would be an issue. He had been putting it off by spending far too much time kissing Oliver because that was the best way to waste time. “You probably should sneak back in soon,” Oliver tells him, bumping their noses together.

Barry grins like an idiot, “yeah but I’ve got a few more minutes,” he says and kisses Oliver again. Sometimes it was easy to forget he was playing second fiddle to Laurel and probably at least one other person. Or maybe he’d just become an expert in ignoring all things that suggested Oliver didn’t actually give a damn about him. Either way.

Oliver was a _great_ kisser and Barry actually had some experience there, he’s kissed a sizable amount of people and Oliver was hands down the best at it. He always seemed to be able to predict what Barry wanted and the results were generally fantastic, if a little lip bruising. Oliver nips at his bottom lip, “you actually have to go now,” he says but he pulls Barry closer into another kiss.

He goes willingly, letting Oliver kiss him thoroughly before he is released for about four seconds before he’s drawn into another kiss. “Okay, _now_ you can go,” Oliver says and Barry was seeing stars. He shakes his head though, earning a laugh from Oliver, before mapping his way back through his bedroom window.

“See ya,” he says quietly and starts climbing the tree that sat outside the window he needed to climb into.

Oliver watches from the ground to make sure Barry got back in safely, or at least that’s what he guessed, and he waves at Oliver as he shuts the window. By then Oliver is already walking away though and Barry sighs, headed off to bed for like an hours’ worth of sleep before he had to be up again. Ugh.

*

“Looking tired, Scarlet, another long night?” Snart asks when he sits down in his regular seat, running slightly late because he had fallen asleep at his locker instead of his desk today.

“Yeah,” he mumbles, “wasn’t even worth it,” he says. It had seemed worth it in the moment but now he sort of felt cheap and used.

“Mm, I’ll bet, poptart?” Snart asks, holding out said pastry.

“Oh it’s like you read my mind, and it’s strawberry, I love strawberry. Thanks,” he says and takes the offered pastry.

“Yeah, like your name, strawberry, which was the color you just were,” Snart says, reciting something Barry had said the day after they officially met.

“You remember that?” he asks, surprised because that was repeated back almost verbatim.

He snorts, “that statement was so stupid I don’t think I’ll ever forget it,” he says but he smiles, taking the edge off the otherwise harsh words.

Barry blushes, “that’s sweet,” he says quietly, smiling around his poptart. They both remain silent until the bell rings and they both shuffle off to their next class, which they happened to have together, and Snart sits next to him there too.

“This is new,” Barry comments.

Snart shrugs, “I need to copy my homework off someone and Mick sure as hell isn’t going to get me a good grade,” he says.

Barry snorts, “if anyone needs to copy someone’s homework for this class I’ll probably need to copy yours. I’m like eighty percent sure I’m failing this class,” he says even though it wasn’t really true, he just had a grade he wasn’t happy with. So like it was failing for him rather than failing in general.

“Doubtful, Scarlet,” Snart says so Barry wrinkles his nose at him. Iris chooses then to walk in, giving him another betrayed look as she was stuck next to Mick again and Barry snickers. Mick looks back at them and he looks as hilariously betrayed as Iris, which makes it all the better. Maybe they would bond over their friends ditching them. Probably not, they didn’t look impressed to be stuck with one another.

“Well, I guess I can at least make this an opportunity to ask you to not scare Cisco, he’s nice guy, give him a chance,” he says.

“Your taste in guys sucks,” Snart points out and ouch, okay, true, but his friend choices were usually pretty good.

“One person does not mean I have bad taste,” he says indignantly, “and I have great taste in friends,” he points out. All his friends were great, Cisco made some great comic relief, Caitlin grounded Cisco, Barry kept the two from squabbling all day, and Iris was a in a whole new league as his best friend.

“You dated Linda Park for like six months,” Snart says, giving him dubious looks.

“What’s wrong with Linda?” he asks. She was nice enough, a bit over enthusiastic about partying, but that didn’t make her a bad person.

“The fact that she’s fucking psycho,” Snart says, “and don’t even deny it, Barry, she’s straight up nuts. And your replacement relationship… is hot, if you’re into that,” he says, looking like he only half believed that.

“Okay first of all Linda is not nuts, she’s just eccentric, and Oliver is very hot, it’s everything else that leaves something to be desired. Which I am aware of, contrary to popular belief. And two, you totally remembered my name all this time and let me suffer with Scarlet? You’re a terrible person, Leo. Also Cisco is a nice person, and if Lisa likes him you should give him a shot, if not, well then you can scare him off,” he says.

“ _Leo_?” he asks, making a face, “just for that I’m never going to give Cisco a chance.”

“Oh come on, Leo’s cute! I was thinking about this last night right, so like Len is a stupid nickname, Lenny is worse, Leonard is a mouthful and it sucks, Snart rhymes with shart, and the way you spell your name has ‘Leo’ in it and Leo is cute. So Leo it is, I’ve decided, don’t you look at me like that you’ve given me _two_ crappy nicknames, I get this one,” he says, “and you leave Cisco out of this, it’s not his fault you have a dumb name”.

Barry can tell he won the argument because Snart stops resisting the nickname, which, yay! “Fine, but only because you’ve started to call to ‘Scarlet’ and I find it endearing. Like a puppy. And with a name like ‘Barry’ you don’t get to judge names. Especially with a friend named ‘Cisco’.”

He ducks his head, “my full name is actually Bartholomew, and Cisco’s is Francisco,” he says, avoiding eye contact because that was too embarrassing to warrant looking at someone’s face when saying that out loud.

He didn’t expect Snart to laugh so hard he got kicked out of class, “see ya later _Leo_ ,” he says as Snart goes, still laughing. The entire class was now staring in shock because Leonard Snart didn’t much laugh, let alone so hard he got kicked out of class.

*

Mick was, reasonably so, more than a little surprised at his sudden attachment to one Barry Allen. It was hardly his fault the kid was so damn lovable though, he was so… _light_. He did some googling, he wasn’t a total moron, and it hadn’t taken long to find that pretty nasty murder business with his mother. He was no stranger to dark shit happening in his life, his father alone was a pile of shit he’d like to never deal with if he could help it, he knew what that could do to a person. But Barry, he didn’t seem effected at all, didn’t mean he wasn’t, but he seemed to be smart enough or emotionally competent enough to learn how to deal with it.

He wasn’t going to lie, he was a bit jealous. Even with that fuck head Oliver Barry didn’t seem to be bogged down with emotional baggage and that was just _weird_. Mick had come back with a bunch of information that Barry was friends with Oliver’s other on-again-off-again girlfriend Laurel and who _does_ that? Barry god damn Allen, that’s who. Plus he was fun to toy with, he blushed so easily and he wasn’t scared shitless of him. It was rare to find someone who wasn’t frightened of him these days though he did it to himself; it was easier to not have connections. People asked uncomfortable questions he wasn’t prepared to answer let alone deal with. Mick happened to be an exception to that general rule because he knew better than to ask questions and dig into shit, he just went with the flow and that was why they were friends.

All the other information he gathered about Barry, as far as he was concerned, was absolute garbage. There was Personality Trope One: Clueless Idiot Who Has No Idea He’s In A Shit Relationship Or Too Stupid To Do Anything About It. That didn’t fit whatsoever, a few well-placed statements and he knew that Barry knew exactly what was going on, and he wasn’t happy with it, but people stayed with abusers for about a million and one reasons and frankly he was the last person who had a place to judge. No one else had much of a place either, especially since they had no fucking clue what an abusive relationship did to a person, but whatever.

Then there was Trope Two: Dumb And Naïve. Not right whatsoever. It would be easy to mistake Barry’s outwardly passive nature and general optimism as stupidity or naiveté but that wasn’t true. The night they met Barry showed a pretty healthy skepticism in the policing system despite having been raised by a cop. Granted anyone with eyes should doubt cops but they were way over-glorified and most fell for it, especially those who lived with cops. But not Barry. The dumb thing made no sense and he had no clue why people didn’t think Barry stood up for himself, obviously no one had ever had a conversation with him. Barry knew full well when to defend himself, and he did pretty well at it too. And the stupidity thing was directly linked to his relationship with Oliver and frankly that just pissed him off. Sure the kid had shit taste in guys, it isn’t like he himself hasn’t pointed that out, but Barry damn well knew it and even if he didn’t how’s that his fault?

And last but not least there was Trope Three: Super Smart But Wasting His Potential Because Of Trope One And Two. One could bring that back around to victim blaming high school students with a superiority complex who didn’t know how to read in between the lines and the general belief that if a person was happy all the time they must be fucking dumb. He got it, there was a lot of shitty things in this world, being happy didn’t make much sense, but that didn’t mean happy people were happy because they didn’t understand. Barry seemed to understand just fine and he was happy despite it, which was confusing but that didn’t mean he was going to insult Barry’s intelligence.

Now there was what he had learned about Barry that mostly made sense.

One, the kid fucking _loved_ the color red, he was always wearing it, and generally red was linked to passion or aggressiveness. Out of the two passion made better sense if colors were truly linked to personality, Barry had plenty of passion and heart though he was under the impression Barry wore his heart on his sleeve a bit too much. He was certain Barry would disagree and he’d have a bunch of arguments to prove his point too.

Which lead to number two, Barry was not some door mat to anyone, or at least it was unlikely. Barry was no stranger to arguments and he wasn’t easily scared off, even if the person had a pretty violent reputation. Whatever his relationship dynamic looked like with Oliver he doubted very much that Barry just took it, at least not if the abuse was outright. It was a little more difficult to see the more subtle stuff but it took a lot of unlearning stuff to see that anyways, he’d know.

That led to number three, Barry was freakishly optimistic even when he shouldn’t be but that wasn’t to be mistaken for stupidity. He wasn’t an idiot, in any sense really, and his general optimism didn’t blind him to certain truths of the world, the shitiness of the policing system for one. He just happened to be a happy person that maybe put a little too much faith where it didn’t belong but that wasn’t stupidity, that was caring.

And there was number four. Barry was a generally pretty caring person, even if he shouldn’t care at all, and he wasn’t easy to piss off. But when you did get on his bad side petty revenge was Barry’s thing and he was surprisingly good at getting away with it. One of the reasons he had decided Barry wasn’t, in fact, an idiot was that he used his charm to his advantage enough for it to be recognized as blatant manipulation. Hartley had found out about that second detention that Barry had written in and complained about it but not one person had believed him, citing that Barry was a ‘good boy’ and would ‘never do such a thing’ and he ‘didn’t even touch the detention slips’. Barry had played along wide-eyed and innocent, all the while holding a fucking detention slip, and not one person called him on the lie. Even Hartley didn’t bother because it was obvious that no one would believe him. When Hartley took off Barry had smirked at him, obviously having known that he just manipulated a bunch of office officials into fucking Hartley into a second detention he hadn’t even earned because Barry tampered with it.

That led to four and a half, Barry didn’t hate Hartley until Hartley had decided to make Cisco the victim of his quick insults and general assholery. So Barry was protective, and caring, but not towards those he didn’t think deserved it even if he cared about them. Otherwise he would have defended Oliver, which he hadn’t, not really, which meant that Barry was not stupid, naïve, or clueless. He genuinely believed Cisco was a good person, and he would defend him readily, but not so with Oliver, which he had found particularly interesting.

In short no one knew what the fuck they were talking about when they talked about Barry Allen even when all the evidence that the rumors were wrong was right in front of them. “So brother, what’s got you so preoccupied?” Lisa asks, throwing herself onto his bed.

He glares at her from the small desk he managed to snatch from someone’s shit not long ago. An entire _desk_ and they hadn’t noticed he took off with it, with Mick’s help. People were idiots. “Barry Allen,” he says because there was no point in keeping it from her. Lisa had a way of finding everything out whether or not he actually said anything so he didn’t bother keeping secrets.

Lisa grins, “oh well well. So what has you so interested? It isn’t like he’s interesting on the surface, or so they say,” she says.

He snorts, “‘they’ are a bunch of idiots. Imagine my surprise when a school of over a thousand kids managed to completely misjudge someone, and I don’t mean they only got a few things wrong, literally nothing is right. That makes him interesting, and he vouched for your Cisco,” he says. He figured Lisa would latch onto the Cisco thing and leave his own hang ups on Barry alone. He loved his sister, but there were things he’d like to keep to himself.

“Did he now? Good things?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. Lisa could take care of herself, he had no illusions that she was some delicate flower in need of protection or some other shit, but she shouldn’t _have_ to take care of herself, which was where he came in.

“Mostly, he has a shit name but I suppose I can’t hold that against a guy when my name is ‘Leonard Snart’,” he says distastefully. As if ‘Leonard’ wasn’t bad enough he had _Snart_ to top it all off. As Barry pointed out it rhymed with ‘shart’ and grade school kids were mean until he punched enough to earn himself a bad reputation. “Do you like Cisco?” he asks, genuinely interested in her assessment of the irritating kid. Not his taste, personally, but Lisa tended to like the weird ones, she claimed they were rare or something. She was also a good judge of character, she couldn’t much afford not to be, and from what he gathered Cisco was a bit of an idiot but the lovable kind.

“He’s nice, actually. He uses his humor as a shield to hide his true feelings a bit too much and he’s a little awkward but that’s alright. And when he touched me and I flinched he didn’t try to touch me again so there’s that,” she says in a nonchalant tone but he knew what that meant to her. She didn’t much have good luck in that way, people liked to think they were entitled to her personal space and the rumors that people spread didn’t help even if they weren’t at all true.

“Hmm. I like Cisco,” he says, smiling at her.

“Great, now stop scaring the piss out of him, he’s easily frightened and I can scare him off myself if needed, I’ve done it before,” she says. Oh he knew, that was where all those _other_ rumors came from and he’s punched more than one person for talking shit about his sister. The least they could do was talk shit that was actually true; it wasn’t like Lisa was short on flaws.

“Fine, but if he hurts you I will kill him,” he says.

Lisa snorts, “then you’re going to have to learn necromancy, brother, because I’ll kill him first,” she says, hopping off his bed and walking out of his room with a bounce in her step. He laughs, yeah, he taught her well.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A warning for underage drinking if that's a thing for you.

Having Iris as his jailor was literally the greatest thing ever because as long as he was home before dawn, when Joe got home, he could do whatever he wanted so long as he didn’t mention Oliver. She didn’t need to know anyways and it wasn’t like he saw him _much_ , just like a couple times. And one time was like an hour tops, that didn’t even count.

Okay so it did and he felt terrible but what was he supposed to do? Probably not lie and be a good person and actually be grounded like a normal human, which was why he was totally on his way straight home from work today. Except one Leonard Snart had other plans, “hey Scarlet, where to?” he asks, leaning against a post box that happened to be on the street outside his house. How he managed to be outside every time he walked past here he had no clue, especially because this was a new habit. Or at least he thought it was, it turned out Leo could actually blend in and stand out depending on his purposes, which, odd but okay.

“Home, I’m grounded, remember?” he says, having had this discussion earlier in the week.

“Doesn’t seem to stop you any other time,” he points out and Barry guessed he had that coming.

“Yeah, but I feel guilty today,” he says, wrinkling his nose. Iris was off with Eddy, whom Barry was pretty sure knew her actual age now but he should probably check in on her with that, she would procrastinate as hard as he would in telling people things they should probably know if he let her. She kicked his ass into shape, he figured he should do the same for her, it was only fair.

“How sweet, sneak out most of the week, feel guilty enough to stay home Friday. You should have left Friday open,” he says.

“Why, got plans?” he asks, hand on his hip and head tilted to the side.

“With you? Nah, you’re off being a good kid, remember? Mick and I on the other hand have plans to play video games and drink all his parents’ alcohol, and your Cisco has another date with my sister. You better pray that goes well,” he throws in and Barry snorts.

“Or what? You’ll beat me up? Ohh, I’m scared,” he says sarcastically, “save the threats for Cisco, he’ll believe them. Besides, I should stay in anyways, I have like five hundred things due Monday,” he says. Most of it was in science and math classes so it wasn’t like that would take him long, he was good at those things, but English tended to throw him for a loop. Why the hell did he have to know about metaphors? When was that going to be useful to him?

That earns him a snort, “you’re probably the first person I’ve ever met that wasn’t related to me who didn’t find me frightening, even Mick is a little scared of me, even if I wouldn’t hurt him. He’s too useful to go do something stupid like that,” he says, “and there is _no way_ you prefer homework to going out.”

Barry raises an eyebrow, “why do you always do that? Pretend like you don’t care about people by claiming you’re using them or something? No one would willingly hang out with Mick Rory if they didn’t genuinely enjoy his company so you aren’t fooling anyone there. And obviously I don’t prefer homework to going out, no normal human prefers homework to going out. I’m just being a good person and actually sticking to my grounding instead of doing whatever I want,” he says indignantly.

“Kid, you don’t know me well enough to go making assumptions like that, and I don’t think being a ‘good person’ really counts after you spent a week sneaking around with your boy-toy whom everyone hates. The good person thing probably should have come first,” he points out. So he was right, that didn’t mean Barry couldn’t like… make it up a little, he was trying okay. That had to count a little.

“Sure I do. I mean you hang out with like two people, both of whom you claim not to like much, but you’ve gotten into enough fights over both Lisa and Mick to indicate that you care enough to either kick someone’s ass or get your ass kicked. People don’t generally start fights for people they don’t care about,” he points out. “And I like to think that maybe I’m atoning a little,” he says even though they both knew that was crap.

“Taking punches is easy kid, it’s the rest that’s harder,” he says and turns around, “but I’ve got places to be and so do you. See ya,” he says, half waving before turning all the way away.

“Hey wait, what’s with the nickname thing? And why the switch back to kid? Was Scarlet a little too personal for you after I pointed out some uncomfortable truths, because if that was the reason for the switch I hate to tell you this but you’re already invested. Giving me some impersonal nickname isn’t going to distance you from me,” he says. Oliver tried that all the time, with the stupid fucking pet names, it drove him nuts. With Leo though it was different, and probably not because he didn’t want to accidentally get his name wrong. There was a pretty clear distinction of when, exactly, he used which name and Barry was pretty sure he knew the why as well.

“People don’t give you enough credit,” he says, “because you are way fucking smarter than everyone else thinks you are.” With that he walks away, which, what the hell was that even supposed to mean? He didn’t much pay attention to what other people thought of him because he didn’t really think it mattered though he was well aware of what people said. How he had proved the rumors wrong, however, he had no idea.

*

“I think sitting beside you in class has fooled people into thinking I’m a good person,” Leo says, flopping into his seat beside Barry, scaring him awake.

“Whaa?” he asks, rubbing his eyes and generally looking grumpy.

“People think you make me a good person, I think. This morning some asshat said some shit about Lisa so I set him straight and the teacher asked what he did to me instead of sending me straight to the office,” he says.

Barry failed to see how, in any way, that connected to him. “I don’t think that’s me,” he says, “maybe the teacher just didn’t care; there are plenty of those here.”

“She asked if I was okay, the last time a teacher asked if I was okay I was seven. The only new thing in my life is you, so obviously people think you make me a good person,” he says. His explanation, in Barry’s opinion, sucked.

“I don’t think that’s right,” he says. There was no way that being in his general proximity had somehow fooled everyone into thinking Leo was suddenly not a shit starter when he was still definitely a shit starter.

“It is so, have you said anything nice about me lately?” he asks, squinting suspiciously at him.

“No, except that you have a weird hairline but I don’t think that counts as ‘nice’,” he says, “and that was to Cisco and Caitlin so it isn’t like that could have influenced teachers.”

“Ten bucks says that when I sit in a seat that isn’t next to you next class I’ll get kicked out immediately,” he says.

“Oh come on, no one gets kicked out for sitting down,” he says, that was just absurd.

“Then I guess you’re willing to take that bet,” he says.

“Fine, it’s an easy ten bucks.”

“Deal?”

“Deal.”

Imagine his surprise when Leo walks in, sits in a desk that isn’t beside him or Mick, and Waller kicks him out without even interrupting her lecture. “You owe me, Scarlet,” Leo says and leaves, drawing Waller’s attention to him but she quickly decides he isn’t worth it and moves on. Iris gives him a questioning look but by all means he was just as lost as her. Who got kicked out of class for sitting down? He was barely in the room for ten seconds.

Maybe he had a point about Barry changing people’s opinions by virtue of existing in close proximity.

*

“Barry you stop throwing out those detention slips, you aren’t even supposed to touch- did you just give Hartley another detention?” Caitlin asks, raising an eyebrow in silent judgement. Sometimes she volunteered her time in the office too, which was either fun because they were friends, or not so fun because she was a total stickler for the rules.

“Oh come on, it’s _Hartley_ , he sucks. And half of these detentions are handed out for stupid reasons; Cisco got a detention for yelling ‘that is mahogany!’ after some student dropped their text book on a desk in math. That’s just dumb,” he says. The statement was hilarious and a pretty good Hunger Games reference, it wasn’t Cisco’s fault that the teachers had no sense of humor.

Caitlin gasps, “you threw out one of Cisco’s detentions! You get that out of the garbage right now!” she says, advancing on him to get the detention slip out of the garbage herself. He snatches the small mesh trash can and holds it away from himself, leaning back in the cushy chair he managed to snipe before Caitlin got to the office. It was a testament to how close they were that Caitlin all but jumped in his lap to reach over him to get to the trash without thinking twice, “you give me that,” she says, struggling to meet Barry’s reach when someone walks in.

“Nice job Scarlet, I was under the impression that Caitlin Snow was a total prude but obviously I was wrong,” someone drawls and they look over to find one Leonard Snart smirking at them. It didn’t help that this looked bad, Caitlin was pressed into Barry, whose arm was extended behind him with the trash can, and his hand was on her hip in attempt to hold her off a little.

“God damnit, Barry,” she snaps, “you get Cisco’s detention out of there,” she tells him and climbs off the chair, slinking off to do whatever else it was that she had to do.

He grins at her as she goes, full well intending to leave Cisco’s detention in the trash. “I take it you’re here for your bet money? Let me tell you, I was more than a little surprised to see that you were right,” he says, holding out the ten Leo was owed. “Also you totally got a detention for sitting down so I threw that out, you can thank me later,” he says, grinning.

“Hanging out with me has made you real wild, Scarlet, slow down,” Leo says, laughing at him, “but I’ll take the help this time, not having to outrun the detention lady every lunch period is kind of nice.”

“Ahh, the perks of befriending the office aide,” he says, smiling.

“There should be no perks to befriending the office aide, Barry, and you are in a relationship so stop flirting,” Caitlin says, chastising him.

“Please, Oliver does it so can I. It’s called equality, Caitlin,” he says, earning another judge-y look. He doesn’t mind though, as judgmental as some people thought Caitlin was she really wasn’t all that bad. She had her opinions but she didn’t expect everyone to adhere to them and if she did she and Cisco would have never managed to be friends. The two were basically polar opposites on most things though they were both geniuses with a talent for science. He was fairly certain they were each other’s major competition for any post-secondary science programs from this particular school, and Hartley but they were all sort of hoping he failed because he was an asshole.

“Yeah, equality,” Leo throws in, grinning.

Caitlin rolls her eyes, “did you get Cisco’s slip out of the trash?” she asks.

“Sure,” he lies, earning another look because he was a terrible liar. “Come on, it was a stupid reason, why should he have to suffer if we can like… help him out a little?” he asks.

“Lawful evil, you are,” she says and he snorts, they both knew he was lawful good. Caitlin does, however, abandon him again to go do her own thing.

“Lawful evil? Really? Has she met you?” Leo asks, raising an eyebrow.

“By her standards I am lawful evil, I just happen to be lawful good to everyone else,” he says.

“Is she blind?”

“Nah, she just deals a lot in absolutes and thinks Cisco should get a detention every time he shouts some random pop culture reference in class and disrupts everyone. I, however, think that’s a stupid reason to punish someone so I throw his detention slips out,” he says.

“A real man of the people you are, Scarlet, crusading for the greater good,” Leo says, grinning.

“I am battling for the greater good; students should have the freedom to make all the funny pop culture references they want, and to go to the bathroom whenever they need to go. No, Waller, I don’t care that five people went before me, they didn’t empty my bladder so I still have to go,” he says, wrinkling his nose. Waller was the worst for it too, and Singh because they were actually evil. Like Disney villain level evil. Except maybe Ursula, she was nice enough to give Ariel nice legs that matched her body type. Barry would have given her chicken legs for comedic effect.

“Right? Never did understand that, Mick just about shit in one of his teacher’s closets once and let me tell you, he has no shame, he would have done it too,” he says, shaking his head. Yeah, Barry didn’t doubt that, Mick Rory was something else.

“That is honestly disgusting but also hilarious, Mick Rory, actual lawful evil,” he says. Well, sort of, at least in that particular case.

“That’s what you get when a guy’s gotta shit. Anyways I have shit to do so see you later, Scarlet,” he says, leaving the room with a halfhearted wave.

Caitlin all but flies out of the room she was in and practically throws herself on the counter he was sitting behind, “tell me everything,” she says, looking eager.

“um,” he says, not certain where her eagerness was coming from.

“Oh come on Barry, you were totally flirting, and he was flirting back! You two would be adorable,” she declares, grinning at him.

He frowns, “um? No? There is nothing happening there, Caitlin, you’re seeing things,” he says. So she was kind of right, but that didn’t mean much of anything. He was a naturally nice and flirty person; it was who he was inside, no feelings necessary.

She leans forward eagerly, “oh no I am not, you two were totally getting flirty and I want to know about it,” she says.

“There’s nothing to tell Caitlin, we talk sometimes and he’s pretty nice despite all the rumors that claim otherwise,” he says, “the end. See? Some pretty boring stuff if you ask me.”

She considers his words and nods, accepting his story, “well okay, but for the record he’s totally into you and you seem like you would make a good pair,” she says. _Better than you and Oliver_ hangs in the air heavily but thankfully Caitlin goes back to her office duties and he goes back to abusing his office powers to give people he didn’t like more detentions.

*

Joe had ungrounded him for good behavior, which was a total joke but he wasn’t going to complain about it. Iris was nice and kept her mouth shut too, but only because he agreed not to tell Joe about Eddy, who did know her real age after a good three hours of Barry pestering her to tell the poor guy. It turned out he had already figured that out and for that reason they weren’t dating, at least for now. Barry decided that he rather liked Eddy after that.

“How do you always manage to get off on good behavior and I always have to stick it out?” Iris asks, coming into his room with her third outfit change. He wasn’t even sure what she was doing but the last two outfits had looked just as nice as this one.

“I have a more lovable face,” he says and Iris throws one of her flats at him, “ouch, don’t throw shoes in the house, Iris! And that looks fine, but I’m not really sure what makes it any different from the last two things you had on,” he says.

“Fine, next time I’ll wait until you’re outside and then I’ll throw a shoe at you. And fine, off to change _again_ ,” she says. Barry groans and Iris laughs at him. He needed someone to put him out of his own damn misery and rescue him from Iris Outfit Hell. She does, thankfully, find an outfit worth wearing before asking Joe if she could go to some party, which made no sense because if he had said no all that effort would have been for nothing. Joe says yes though, and his admittedly sad attempt to keep her out of trouble was to instruct her to bring Barry along.

“See?” Iris says as they go, “you’re like an angel or something, everyone thinks you’re like so good but you’re definitely the worse one out of the two of us. How do you do it, I want tips,” Iris says, bumping her hip into his.

“I told you, I have a very lovable face,” he says, grinning, “but to be real I have no clue. Everyone just thinks I’m so nice or whatever, I mean they aren’t wrong, but I definitely don’t live up to the ‘do no wrong’ thing everyone expects of me,” he says.

“Well, one of these days you’re going to shatter that illusion,” Iris says, “but I’ll still love you.”

“Yeah, you’ll be like the only one,” he says in a half joking tone. He was actually worried that one day someone would realize he wasn’t all that and then everyone else would find out and everyone would hate him but he mostly ignored that fear.

“Will not, now let’s go get drunk and pretend we aren’t hungover in the morning when dad asks,” she says, dragging him off to whatever party she had been invited to.

Generally parties were pretty boring to him, a bunch of drunk teens doing drunk things and being dumb, pretty normal as far as he knew. That was before he ran into Laurel and Oliver, together, but at that point they were drunk and happy to see each other much to Oliver’s horror. “Oh my god it’s been like sixty years since I seen you last!” Laurel yells, her drink sloshing out the side of her cup as she throws her arms around him.

“Yeah!” he yells back, “you’re awesome, I forgot you existed,” he says, grinning and laughing as she steers them away from Oliver to go do… something.

“Oh my god, how did you forget I existed, we’re dating the same guy!” she yells, laughing way too hard at that.

“I forgot he existed too,” Barry admits, his drunk-brain was a pretty dumb brain. He worked on like… basic instincts. Like drinking. And sometimes peeing, why did alcohol do the peeing thing?

“Good, he kind of sucks. We should date each other!” Laurel decides excitedly, “we would be _so cute_!”

He starts laughing, “that’s the worst idea ever Laurel, I’m gay. Wait, didn’t we talk about this at some point in the distant future?” he asks, confused.

“Past,” Laurel says.

“What?” he asks, trying to straighten out his own thoughts.

“The distant past, not the future, we haven’t got there yet silly,” she says and starts laughing again.

“Oh yeah. I forgot about that, but we’re not dating. Oh, did I tell you about that new guy I met yet?” he asks.

Laurel gasps dramatically, “you met a guy, tell me everything!” she says and promptly sits on the floor.

“Oh you don’t want to sit there, let’s find actual furniture,” he says and helps her up. It felt like five seconds but he was fairly certain that it was actually like five minutes of struggling to peel Laurel off the ground. He catches Oliver’s eye as they stumble away but he doesn’t hold it, preoccupied with holding Laurel up and also not stumbling.

He and Laurel end up talking about Leo for like… ever by his count though it was probably closer to twenty minutes. Laurel at least was super excited about this though he couldn’t tell if that was because she’d have Oliver to herself or because she was actually happy. He decides on option two because Laurel was a good person and she wouldn’t be happy just for her own benefit. Like maybe that too, but mostly he thought she was happy for him.

Sometime later Tommy comes around to collect Laurel, who goes with loud protest and the declaration that Tommy was super cute and she needed to remember to tell him that sober. Barry wanders off to go find Iris when he runs into Oliver, “oh hey!” he says excitedly. He was a generally excitable person sober but drunk he was like ten times more excitable.

“Hey Barry, you okay?” he asks, looking concerned but he had no clue why.

“Yeah I’m fine!” he says, grinning, “are you okay? You look like… worried or something.”

“I’m not worried, I’m fine. How’s Laurel?” he asks.

Barry frowns, “you came here with Laurel, shouldn’t you like… know how she is? I mean like she’s fine but I thought you’d know that. Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks.

“I’m fine but hey, listen, I gotta go so I’ll like… see you later,” he says and he _ruffles Barry’s hair_ and leaves.

For a second he stands there dumbfounded because he could not believe that he, a legal adult, just got his _hair ruffled_ by his supposed boyfriend. He looks over and finds Leo standing there wincing, “tough break, Scarlet,” he says.

“I… did that just happen? Did he just ruffle my hair?” he asks, turning to face the direction Oliver had taken off in. To add insult to injury he turns around to find an eyeful of Laurel and Oliver making out. Ouch. “Yeah. I’m basically sober now, I’m going home,” he decides.

“Oh woah there, you aren’t going anywhere,” Leo says, grabbing his arm and pulling him back, “you need to sober up before you go anywhere or you’ll end up lost and frustrated, trust me. Come on,” he says, pulling Barry away to… somewhere.

They end up sitting outside on the deck of whoever’s house they were at and Barry had a cup of coffee in his hand. He didn’t actually remember the part where he got the coffee and he so knew he was going to regret this in the morning. “You can say it,” he says after a few minutes of silence.

“Say what?” Leo asks, raising an eyebrow at him.

“‘I told you so’, everyone else would say it,” he mumbles. They were right, though he already knew that.

“And what would that do hmm? You already knew he was a crap person to date and saying ‘I told you so’ doesn’t do much more but rub your already hurt feelings in your face. What asshole would do that?” he asks.

Basically all of his friends but he doesn’t say that. “You’d be right though,” he says, taking a drink of the coffee. Ugh, it was black, disgusting.

“So I would be, but you already knew that, even before tonight. I’m sure you have your reasons for hanging on and who the hell am I to judge?” he asks. He means it too, Barry can tell and he was drunk so that was impressive.

“Are like… not drunk? Because it would really suck to be the not drunk one right now,” he says.

Leo snorts, “if any one of us needs something to numb things a little right now it’s you. And nah, I don’t drink,” he says.

Barry frowns, “I thought you had plans to get drunk and play video games with Mick last week,” he says.

“More like Mick gets really drunk and doesn’t notice I’m sober. It’s for the best really, the guys a fucking disaster drunk, he needs a sober buddy to make sure he doesn’t die trying to juggle knives or something. I wish that last bit was a joke, but it actually isn’t, Mick’s a fucking idiot drunk,” he says.

“Mick’s a fucking idiot sober,” Barry counters, “but like… parties are no fun sober,” he says.

“Yeah well, they say alcohol enhances your personality and I’m an asshole sober so I figured I shouldn’t push shit by getting drunk,” he says. Even drunk Barry got how loaded that statement was.

“Well,” Barry says, “if you ever want a good time get Cisco drunk, he’s hilarious.”

“I don’t think Cisco needs to be drunk to be a joke,” Leo says and Barry snorts and almost chokes on the coffee he was drinking.

“That was really mean but so well done,” he says, snort laughing. Poor Cisco, he was never going to be well-liked by his girlfriend’s brother.

“You a little more sober now?” Leo asks, nudging Barry’s thigh with his leg.

“Yeah, I mean I’m still pretty drunk but I’m not batshit wasted anymore so that’s good,” he says. He thinks. He sort of wants to remain drunk for the next ever so he doesn’t have to deal with the Oliver thing but that was probably pretty unhealthy so he figured maybe he should not do that.

“Good, because you should probably go home and try and sleep off whatever hangover you might have before you actually get one,” he says. Barry nods and gets up, finishing off his disgusting coffee that did a surprisingly good job at making him slightly more sober.

He doesn’t really expect to be walked home but he wasn’t going to turn down the offer either, mostly because he thought it was totally cute and Oliver never offered. The walk was generally quiet, thankfully, because Barry didn’t really feel like filling the silence with something. Other than catching him before he fell over a few times nothing particularly eventful happens on his way home, mercifully. He’s had more than enough drama for one night, thanks, or like… the whole year.

More like his whole life.

“Thanks,” he says quietly when they reach Barry’s house. He doesn’t even ask how the hell he knew where Barry lived; he probably told him at some point and forgot.

“Eat some bread, take an Advil, and go to bed,” is the list of instructions he gets.

“I think that might be too long of a list,” he says and he gets a look, “what? I have a short attention span normally let alone drunk. Okay fine, I’ll take the Advil, eat the bread, and go to bed,” he mumbles, “actually can it be toast?” he asks.

“Is toast still bread?” Leo asks.

“No, it’s toast,” Barry mumbles indignantly, “I’m not changing my very true statement,” he says when he gets another look for that.

“They’re the same thing,” Leo says.

“In all my years I have never been so offended,” he starts but he’s cut off.

“Go to bed,” Leo says, gently nudging him to the house.

“Fine. But bread and toast are not the same and that is final,” he says.

“If you insist,” Leo says.

“I do insist,” he says more so to himself than anyone else. He fumbles a bit but he gets the door unlocked with relatively no troubles and turns around to find Leo still there, waiting for him to actually get inside the house. He smiles to himself and steps into the foyer.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So for anyone who read the first update, that was the wrong chapter... That was a chapter ahead so... opps.

Iris is at least not an asshole about the Oliver thing, thank god, because he really could do without that right now. She sits down on his bed with a pile of freshly baked brownies and her homework because this is what bonding was now, homework, ugh. He reaches for one of the brownies and Iris smacks his hand, “you leave my brownies alone. If I have to do seventeen million math questions I’m going to need these babies to give me a reason to live,” she says.

“You made double chocolate brownies for me to stare at them in my time of need?” he asks, pouting and pretending to be offended.

“Well you were in the kitchen with me, if you wanted some you could have made your own brownies,” she says, pulling the plate closer to her. Obviously she intended to have hum suffer and this was just downright cruel. Who made break up food and didn’t give it to the sort of broken up person? He wasn’t sure what to do with Oliver just yet even if he knew the answer was pretty obvious.

“I hope you know that if Eddy comes around I will be showing him baby pictures as payback for this and you were a very cute, very messy baby. Remember those adorable pictures of you neck deep in your cupcake on your first birthday?” he asks and iris gasps.

“You wouldn’t!” she says.

“Not if you share the brownies,” he says and Iris relents, sliding the plate to the middle of his bed. Hell yeah, threatening to break out the baby pictures always worked even if they were truly adorable. He snatches a brownie and his phone vibrates, telling him that he had received a text. He frowns, “who the fuck is ‘Lilo’?” he asks more to himself than Iris. He opens the message and realizes that drunk him must have been playing a stupid prank on sober him because he knew exactly who it was.

_Sup Scarlett, you dead?_

So somewhere in the night before he’d given his number to Leo and stuck him under ‘Lilo’ in his phone because he probably thought it was funny. It wasn’t really that funny, drunk him was stupid as hell.

_No._

_I’m hangover proof_

_Iris made brownies_

_I’m so going to eat them all_

Iris raises an eyebrow, “you seem enthused, who was ‘Lilo’?” she asks.

“Lilo turned out to be drunk me’s idea of a joke, it was Leo. Snart,” he clarifies when Iris looks confused.

“He goes by ‘Leo’?” she asks, not looking any less confused.

“No, well sort of now, but he nicknamed me ‘Scarlet’ first so he started it and Leo is way better than Scarlet,” he points out. It was science.

“You guys have nicknames for each other? That’s so cute!” Iris says, wiggling around in excitement for reason Barry couldn’t pinpoint. Like yeah sure, they had nicknames for each other, but that was like… not important.

“So? Technically Oliver and I have nicknames for each other too,” he points out because he sure as hell knew Iris didn’t think _that_ was cute.

She rolls her eyes, “yeah, so he doesn’t accidentally call you ‘Laurel’ or some other name. And they aren’t personalized, Scarlet is obviously personalized because you like red,” she says, grinning. O-kay then, who would have thought Iris would be happy about the prospect of him dating Leonard Snart of all people. He would have thought she would think that was another step down considering his reputation and all, not to mention his father’s reputation.

_Avoid the brownies_

_Are you nuts?_

_Who eats brownies hungover?_

He god damn ate brownies hungover and just because he was told not to he all but shoves a whole brownie into his mouth. Iris wrinkles her nose at him but he ignores her because she was a _great_ brownie maker. It was one of the few things she did well actually, most of the time she burnt stuff beyond repair. That included, on one memorable occasion, water. “You should be like… a professional brownie cooker. You can sell them to the pot heads, you know they’d probably pay a stupid amount of money for them,” he mumbles around his brownie.

“I totally thought of that! I mean I might as well make some money and for the life of me I can’t find a job,” she says. Yeah, he was pretty lucky in finding a job at the local animal shelter, which was enjoyable because he got to pet adorable animals. Mostly he just cleaned stuff but still, puppies!

“You might as well. Just make sure the teachers don’t find out, so like, an underground brownie selling ring,” he says.

_You ate the brownies, didn’t you?_

He frowns at the text because who the hell used proper grammar in texts?

_Hell ya_

_They good_

_Shes genius_

“So. When did you and Snart get close enough to text each other smiling,” Iris asks, grinning at him. Okay first of all he smiles texting everyone, he was pretty happy with everyone who text him. Mostly. Unless it was about school projects because eww, no one would be happy about that.

“Stop reading too far into things Iris, it’s called ‘friends’, we both have lots of them,” he says and Iris smacks him for his sass. His phone buzzes again and he picks it up, all of his happy mood dissipating when he sees who it is and he throws the phone back on his bed.

“Wow okay, that was a huge mood change. Was that someone else or do I have to kick someone’s ass?” she asks and the image of her trying to fight Leo makes him laugh. Mostly because he wasn’t actually sure who might win that. Iris, he had a feeling, was a scrapper and she wouldn’t be afraid to bite. If it was her and Lisa though, Lisa would win. He didn’t have that much faith in her.

He sighs, “Oliver decided now would be a good time to kiss ass,” he says. He hadn’t read what the message said but he didn’t care to either. Honestly he had better things to do with his time.

“Well, as much as I kind of hate to say it you should probably deal with that sooner rather than later,” she says. She was right but he wasn’t going to deal with it any time soon because he wasn’t fond of emotional pain so.

*

So the brownies were a terrible idea and he should have known it because even if he wasn’t recovering from an alcohol binge he would have had a stomach ache after eating like ten brownies. But they were _so good_ and he had such little self-control and common sense. Plus Oliver kept texting and he figured brownies were healthier than shots of vodka and Iris kept giving him looks. She wanted what was best for him, he knew, but sometimes he wished she would butt out. He sort of wished all of his friends would do that even though he knew they were all trying to help.

Eventually Oliver gets annoyed of Barry not answering his texts so he calls and Barry could ignore it if he wanted to get like twenty more calls. He didn’t so he answers the damn phone, making sure to let Oliver know he was annoyed with his tone. Thankfully Iris had left him be roughly an hour before to try and sleep off his brownie induced hangover. Granted alcohol didn’t generally affect him all that much aside from being drunk but it seemed brownies were the secret ingredient to the mythical hangover. It could go back to the hell from whence it came.

“Hey, Barry,” Oliver says in a soft voice that’s meant to be soothing but it just grates Barry’s nerves.

“What do you want?” he snaps, sounding far more irritated than he intended but he couldn’t bring himself to give a damn.

“Are… you okay?” Oliver asks and that question was so stupid Barry moved the phone away from his ear to give the phone an annoyed look.

“I’m fine, why do you care?” he says, irritated. He hadn’t meant to be so short with Oliver but he figures that maybe Oliver had earned it at this point. It wasn’t like Oliver did a whole lot of caring up until this point and now, Barry knew; he was mostly trying to cover his own ass.

“Of course I care, Barry, we’ve been dating for two years!” Oliver says, as if he was actually offended by that statement.

That pissed Barry off even more because the statement wasn’t even true. “We’ve been dating for a little over a year you fucking moron, you’ve been dating Laurel for two years. God, if you’re going to cheat on someone at least make an effort to do it right! The least you could do is keep track of when you started dating who, and use our names for shit sakes, we both know you call us ‘baby’ because you don’t want to screw up our names, we aren’t dumb. And while we’re on that subject, don’t date people who are related to and/ or living with cops, we know when things look suspicious and we will investigate, especially when both of us have an interest in law enforcement and justice oriented careers. And if one of us is the mistress aren’t we supposed to get cool and expensive presents or something? You’re like stupid rich; the least you could do is buy us cool shit if you insist on fucking us over. Honestly you’re a shitty cheater, Oliver,” he says and hangs up.

Well alright, he was not expecting that and he was certain Oliver wasn’t either but it was too late to take it back now and Barry was genuinely upset about the present thing. He and Laurel could have compared and swapped gifts, they could have _bonded_ but Oliver cheated them out of that too, the asshole. When his phone buzzes he half expects it to be Oliver offering a shitty apology or something but its Leo instead.

_Regretting the brownies?_

Okay first of all Barry took personal offense to anyone regretting that he would, under any circumstances, regret brownies even if he probably should.

_I do not_

_They were fucking good_

_I dn’t care if I have a stomach ache_

_Also Oliver called_

_He started dating Laurel 1 st_

_I’m the mistress_

_That means I get cool presents_

_I feel fucking cheated because I got no gifts_

He sends the flurry of texts off, not paying attention to the sheer amount of messages. His friends were used to it by now though on more than one occasion they have accused him of being a savage because he text individual thoughts instead of one cohesive message. It was who he was as a person, that wasn’t his fault.

_First off send one fucking message like a normal human. 2, who the hell feels cheated out of presents instead of actually cheated on because you were actually cheated on?_

He felt cheated but not because he was cheated on, that’s who. Also long messages were long and boring. Short messages were cute and fun, obviously, so he was going to ignore the instruction to send longer texts.

_I do_

_If he is going to cheat_

_I want cool shit_

_And short txts r cute!_

After a few minutes of texting Leo back and forth, short texts _were_ cute contrary to popular belief, and no response from Oliver he finds himself strangely relieved. He also feels sort of upset, which was confusing and made no sense so against his better senses he chooses to ignore all that. He could deal with it later, he reasoned, so why deal with it now? Plus he had better things to focus on, like his brownie induced hangover, who knew something so good could cause such a bad reaction, and the remainder of his homework. Biology, unfortunately, was beckoning him and even though he had zero interest in actually doing the work it was better than doing the emotions thing so bio homework it was.

*

Mick corners him when he’s least expecting it, though to be fair he wasn’t sure anyone expected to be cornered under a stair well between first and second period. He figures that maybe Mick wanted him to do his homework of something stupid, it wouldn’t be the first time that sort of thing had happened but no; Mick had totally different motivations for cornering him.

“I know you think I’m an idiot,” he says and Barry doesn’t bother to deny it, literally everyone thought Mick was a fucking moron. He kind of was. “But I don’t need to be smart to hurt you,” he says and _okay_ that sure as hell wasn’t where Barry thought that was going.

He raises an eyebrow, “and you would do that… because?” he asks, frowning. To his knowledge he hadn’t done anything to piss Mick Rory off and unlike his other bullies Mick was pretty reactive. Usually he didn’t mess with people unless they messed with his first, or Leo.

“People like to think Len’s a heartless asshole but he isn’t, and for some stupid reason he’s decided you’re worthy of his attention so if you fuck this up I _will_ hurt you,” Mick warns. Barry would be stupid not to take the warning seriously, reactive or not Mick had a reputation that was actually worse than Leo’s despite far less incidents.

He squints at Mick, “are you jealous?” he asks because Mick totally sounded like a spurned lover, “oh my god you’re totally jealous that’s so cute. Okay okay, don’t look at me like that, it’s an observation, I’ll do my best not to break hearts even though I’m pretty sure this is an over-reaction because he totally doesn’t care that much,” he says, skirting around Mick. He lets Barry go, glaring at him the whole way because he had some delusions about his friend’s feelings.

Barry had assumed the weirdness was done with Mick cornering him in the stair well but no, just before lunch Lisa corners him on his way to the cafeteria, looking at him like he was prey or something. Frankly out of the two siblings he had no fucking clue why Cisco thought _Leo_ was the frightening one, clearly Lisa was far scarier. “You had best not break my brother’s heart, baby face, because I _will_ hurt you,” she says and she means it too, he can tell.

“Get in line, Mick made the same threats,” he says, acting braver than he felt. If anyone was actually bound to kill him for accidentally screwing things up it would definitely be Lisa.

“Oh Mick has nothing on me, and regardless of what you think he _does_ like you, quite a bit and I assure you if you mess that up you will pay for it,” she says, taking a small step closer. He’d take a step back but his back was flush against a wall so that wasn’t an option.

“I don’t doubt that but like… you guys must be seeing something I am not because I don’t think Leo cares that much about me, I mean a few conversations and one shared pop tart doesn’t really mean much,” he points out. Granted Mick and Lisa knew Leo far better than him but still, he wasn’t terrible at reading people contrary to popular belief. He was certain that they were over-reacting to nothing.

Lisa tilts her head to the side and examines him for a few seconds, “the last person who called him ‘Leo’ ended up hospitalized,” Lisa says.

“Eesh, that’s a bit… drastic,” he says, and frightening.

“That’s what dad used to call him as a kid, now he’s not overly fond of the nickname but he doesn’t seem to care that you call him that. It’s peculiar and I don’t know what it means, but I’ll find out,” she says, almost as if the words were a warning.

Cisco, thankfully, shows up then and Lisa is distracted by him and he is just as distracted by her. The two actually worked surprisingly well together and Barry hoped it worked out for them. Caitlin was skeptical, Lisa and Cisco didn’t have a lot in common, but when she pointed it out Cisco was so offended that Barry was certain that he didn’t care. Cisco didn’t choose a lot of people to care about, he’s had bad luck in the past, but when he did care about someone he cares fiercely and protectively. Barry would know, as much as he’s defended Cisco to Hartley Cisco had stood up for him to his other bullies too.

He decides that today was weird and he was going to go to lunch and hopefully get most of his homework done.

*

He barely speaks to Oliver for two days because he was doing some thinking. Laurel had called in a panic because she had realized that their friendship pretty much centered around Oliver and she had wanted to know if they were still okay because she genuinely liked him. He had assured her that their friendship was intact and she could still talk to him whenever she wanted to. She had been thankful and had gone on a long rant about how sorry she was about the party thing but that wasn’t her fault, their situations could have easily been reversed and they both knew it.

The last thing he expected was to find Oliver waiting outside of his workplace for him looking like a kicked puppy. “Can I talk to you?” he asks, all but running to keep up as Barry walks right past him.

“What about?” he asks, “because you don’t have much desire to communicate on any other given day,” he says.

“ _Please_ ,” Oliver says and it’s the tone he uses that gets Barry to turn around. Oliver looks like shit but he doesn’t find much pity for him, if he was losing sleep he did it to himself.

“What?” he snaps because he had plans, he was supposed to be attempting to help poor Leo tutor Mick in math. Mick was a fucking moron in any given subject but math was probably worse than others, he was not looking forward to it but it was better than whatever this was.

“Can’t we just… talk?” he asks, sounding kind of pathetic.

Barry sighs and crosses his arms, somewhat curious, “talk about what, exactly, Oliver?” he asks. If Oliver stuck a name on it he’d stick around but he knew damn well Laurel and cheating were not things Oliver was about to admit to.

“Us?” he asks, as if Barry was the one to decide what they were talking about here.

He shakes his head, “there is no ‘us’ Oliver, there never has been, I was just deluding myself into thinking we had an actual relationship. Which, fine, no big deal, I’ll go do something else and you’re… currently doing that so,” he says, trailing off somewhat awkwardly.

Oliver looks shocked even though he shouldn’t; it wasn’t as if Barry had ever been shy about defending himself when he thought it was needed. And also Oliver _was_ in another relationship and honestly Barry and Laurel would have to be blind not to notice. “That… isn’t true! We are so in a relationship!” Oliver says, sounding hilariously offended.

“No we aren’t and you know what, that’s fine, I’m okay with that and you should be too. Just go home and like… be happy or something,” he says. Oddly he actually _did_ feel okay with the whole break up thing; it was strangely relieving to leave Oliver behind. “Look, I have places to be so I’m leaving and you are too because we’re done here,” he says.

“The hell we are,” Oliver snaps, “you are _not_ walking away from me!”

Barry rolls his eyes, “what are you going to do Oliver, _make_ me date you? To be completely honest I would rather boil my own head then spend another _second_ in your presence because you are fucking exhausting. And I’m done with your games, I have better things to do with my energy and you make me feel like shit all the time. Sorry,” he says without really meaning it.

“Is there someone else?” Oliver asks, looking far more offended at that prospect than he had a right to.

“There doesn’t need to be someone else for me to be done with you, Oliver,” he says in an exhausted tone. He was just… _done_.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I love you guys lol. Also I feel unproductive so I figure hey, post fanfic! lol.

“You must be a fucking wizard because you got _Mick_ to understand _math_ ,” Leo says, looking properly impressed.

“Bow down,” Barry jokes, grinning but Leo actually inclines his head slightly and Barry lets out a gasp, “oh I am so letting that go to my head,” he says.

“You got _Mick_ to understand _math_ , I think that was worthy of acknowledgement,” he says. Hell yeah it was and Barry didn’t even know how he did it. Either way suddenly Mick made a breakthrough and even Lisa had found that mildly impressive and she didn’t seem very fond of him whatsoever. Mick seemed willing to give him a chance, Lisa looked more like she was prepared to strangle him at any moment. Maybe Cisco would talk to her for him, he talked to Leo about Lisa, it was only fair.

“That’s because I am a _genius_ ,” he says and Leo snorts.

“Yeah you let that go to your head pretty damn quick,” he says but he’s grinning at Barry, “at least you have the results to back it up. Cisco? Ehh.”

“Cisco’s actually a genius though, not so much at social interaction and dating but mechanics? He’s made some pretty cool stuff,” Barry says.

“Like?” Leo asks, raising an eyebrow.

“A cold gun, don’t look at me like that, it freezes things solid. He flash froze a tree in his back yard. His parents were pretty pissed when he accidentally froze the bathroom door shut once though; it actually froze half the room. The pipes didn’t work right for months. But still, he _flash froze_ a _tree_ , that’s pretty sweet,” he says.

“That is… the dumbest weapon I have ever heard of,” Leo says, making a face. “He has no right to make a claim on genius, at least not until he can manage to get _Mick Rory_ to understand math. Now that’s impressive,” he says and Barry’s stupid body decides it was perfectly appropriate to blush.

“I’m sure he could manage,” he says because Cisco was actually a really good teacher. The reason he and Caitlin had gotten to where they were with their own side projects was because they were constantly learning from one another in some pretty interesting ways. And Caitlin’s parents let them use the garage even though that one time Cisco accidentally ruined the door when something blew up.

“Like fuck he could, I’m semi convinced you actually practiced witchcraft,” Leo says, sounding half convinced of his own argument. It was sweet, and flattering, and Barry was probably enjoying the attention too much but he’s always been a little self-indulgent.

*

Barry never really took Oliver for the jealous type because in all honesty he always seemed too wrapped up in himself to care but it turned out he had a jealous streak a mile wide. He seemed intent on proving that Barry was obviously with someone else when he wasn’t and even if he was it wasn’t like Oliver had much right to care. Not that he would cheat on Oliver, he’d just break up with him because he wasn’t an asshole, but still. It seemed a bit hypocritical to care about being cheated on when he had cheated on Barry, well, Laurel with Barry but still.

“God, if I knew that catching him kissing you would actually get him to pay attention I would have done that a long time ago,” Laurel mumbles, “is that messed up? That’s probably pretty screwed up,” she says.

He shakes his head, “honestly if this happened a month ago I would have been thrilled but now it’s just annoying. Like get a hint, I don’t want anything to do with you,” he says, rolling his eyes. He understood Laurel though, and he was surprised she wasn’t angry with him. She had a bad habit of putting blame in all the wrong places, at least initially, but she seemed surprisingly fine with all of this.

“Are you sure it isn’t because of me? Because if it is I get it-” Laurel would have continued but he cuts her off before she can apologize for something that is not her fault.

“It isn’t because of you. I don’t know, I guess I just realized I was… exhausted. I’m tired of dealing with Oliver’s mood swings, of feeling like shit, pretending I’m not hurt, pretending like I don’t know you exist even though we’re good friends. I have better things to do with my time and energy, like talk to you about literally anything that isn’t Oliver, and math homework. Well, maybe not the math but you get the point,” he says. Sure, Leo had some to do with it, but not that much. It was just a startling difference, the way Leo treated him and the way Oliver did.

Leo remembered his favorite color and Oliver probably didn’t even know he had one. His friends were the same way, they actually knew stuff about him and cared to remember it and he wanted more of that in his life. Hell, even _Laurel_ knew what his favorite colour was because she bought him a red sweater for his birthday. She was fond of black and would fight anyone who said it wasn’t a color, it was actually pretty amusing. She wore more purple than anything but that was because she hadn’t particularly wanted to blend in with the emos even if she was secretly jealous of the black lip stick.

“I feel that, I do, but like what if it gets better? What if it _stays_ better? What if he goes off and dates someone else and he’s not an ass? Then all of this would have been for nothing _and_ I would know that if I stuck it out eventually it would have been fine. I don’t that, not when I already have so much into this,” she says. Barry so got that, it was why he had held on for so long and when it was good it was great, if that was the norm instead of the exception…

“I understand,” he says, “and I mean hey, maybe he might get over me. We can hope so because calling like six times a day is bordering on stalking.” Half the time he had wondered if Oliver even knew what a phone was and now he not only knew that Oliver did know what a phone was but he wanted him to put the damn thing down. He had his chance to be the doting boyfriend and he chose to ignore Barry until he wanted something and now he had gone in the total opposite direction to creepy and obsessive.

Laurel wrinkles her nose, “pretty sure that’s actually is stalking, Barry. I should dump him too, this is dumb and I don’t like feeling jealous of someone who’s being stalked, it’s creepy,” she says. As if on cue his phone rings, revealing Oliver’s number and he rolls his eyes.

“You should, maybe he’d go and stalk you and you’re dad would bust him for it,” he says. Laurel’s dad monitored her movements far more than Joe monitored his and he was not fond of Oliver at all. Granted that was understandable though Barry thought he took it too far sometimes.

Laurel laughs harshly, “oh I’m sure he’d find at least ten other charges too. But seriously, neither of us need this but I don’t know if I can let go, if I _should_ let go,” she says.

Barry shrugs, “do whatever it is you think is right for you. I don’t really expect you to do what I did; you’re a totally different person. On a less depressing note your hair looks really cute today,” he says and Laurel smiles, brushing a strand out of her face.

*

“Get out of my seat,” Iris tells Leo, standing beside his seat with her hands on her hips.

Leo considers her offer, “no,” he says after a few seconds. They all knew that was what he was going to say but his considering Iris’ demand made it sound more condescending.

“Be nice,” Barry tells them. Iris had gone on a long rant the night before about never, ever, sitting next to Mick Rory ever again and Barry didn’t have the heart to tell her that was going to be her new set buddy for life.

“I’ll sit on you,” Iris threatens, which was a really dumb idea, because Leo pushes the chair back and gestures to his lap, calling her bluff. Iris seems to panic for a split second but she was just as stubborn as Leo so she sits, glaring at him at a freakishly close proximity. Barry sighs and prepares for a long day in which this happened in every class because he was eighty percent sure that was what was going to happen.

The teacher chooses then to walk in, frowning at the sight of Iris sitting on Leo’s lap. Barry buries his face in his hands because his friends were embarrassing. “What are you two doing?” he asks, glaring at the two of them.

In their defense neither one of them looked happy about this arrangement, “what’s it look like?” Leo snaps, “pretty sure Iris in my lap because she wants to sit beside Barry and I’m not moving. Apparently neither is she,” he says.

“Iris, out of his lap, that is wildly inappropriate,” he says.

Iris squints, “I think it’s weird you consider this inappropriate when it’s pretty obvious we don’t want to be in this position. Like we are not doing some dating thing, we don’t even like each other, and like what if I was a lesbian? You don’t know,” Iris says, clearly drawing the moment out longer in hopes that Leo would get bored of this and move.

“I know for a fact you’ve dated guys, Iris, out of his lap,” the teacher says.

“Fine, so we know Iris is straight, what makes you think I am? I’ve never dated anyone that goes to school here, you don’t know who I’m attracted to and I can assure you I don’t want a petty black girl in my lap,” Leo says, raising an eyebrow. He seemed to be using Iris’ own strategy against her though if this was pushed they’d be kicked out and Iris wasn’t used to getting in trouble.

Barry sighs because apparently he was going to have to be the adult here. He picks his stuff up and moves to the seat beside Mick, “now you have a seat that isn’t next to Mick,” he says, looking over his shoulder at them. He has never seen Iris look so betrayed, Leo looked impressed at his thwarting his and Iris’ plans.

Iris sputters for a second, “no,” she says, crossing her arms and glaring at Barry. Leo sighs and accepts his fate though he doesn’t have to put up with Iris for long because they both get kicked out.

“Finally,” Hartley mumbles under his breath.

“Shut up, Hartley,” Barry says perhaps a little too loud because he and Mick get kicked out next.

“But Mick didn’t even do anything!” Barry protests.

“Hartley Rathaway is a useless cumstain, there, now I did something. Let’s go,” Mick says, gathering his books and leaving the room. Barry sighs and follows him off to the office to face his fate.

The office people are totally judging them, Barry could feel it but Iris and Leo were holding strong in their opinions that they were not in the wrong. “What did the two of you do?” the secretary, Patty Barry thinks her name is, asks.

“I didn’t move out of the seat I was in first,” Leo says, crossing his arms and glaring poor Patty down.

She frowns and looks over to Iris, “I didn’t move out of my seat either,” she says, crossing her arms too and Patty sighs, sensing she wasn’t going to get anything out of them so she turns to Mick and Barry.

“I told Hartley to shut up,” Barry says.

“I said he was a useless cumstain, I stand by that,” Mick says.

Patty sighs, “you know what… you two can go, as much as you two should be nicer I understand, just avoid homeroom. You two though, I have a feeling there’s more to the story than you’re telling,” she says and walks away, presumably to gather more information.

“Wow, that was easy,” Mick says, “Len’s right; you are like a good luck charm or something. Think I could get away with calling Wells a twat in your presence?” he asks.

“I’m pretty sure you couldn’t,” Barry says.

“Bet you could,” Leo says and Mick grins, obviously having exchanged some sort of communication and Barry can take a bet as to what that was.

“You are not calling Wells a twat in my presence just to see if you can get away with it. Now I am leaving to go sleep in the computer lab downstairs because no one is ever in there this early,” he says, walking away from the crazy.

*

The rest of the day is surprisingly eventful because Leo and Iris start _bonding_ by arguing about Barry. It was weird, he decided, to watch the two of them battle each other out for who knew more about him in a given situation except Iris had the benefit of living with him for the majority of his life thus far. Leo kept up well though, like _really_ well. Their friendly bickering was about stuff that Leo could have picked up at any point but he’d have to be observant and it was pretty clear he was paying attention and he listened. He even knew Barry’s favorite pop tart flavor and Iris thought she had him there.

He’s sitting in his room screwing around on the internet because no homework, yay, when Oliver calls _again_. Sending the call to voicemail was definitely tempting but he decides to answer the call so that Oliver got that they were done. Or at least he hoped that Oliver would get the damn memo. “What do you want, Oliver?” he asks, sounding tired.

“Can’t we talk?” Oliver asks and Barry rolls his eyes.

“About  what? I thought I made myself pretty damn clear the other day so I don’t think there’s much to discuss. And for the record stalking people? Not sexy,” he says.

“Okay first of all I am _not_ stalking you, don’t flatter yourself, and two, what about that guy you’ve been sneaking around with?” he asks.

Barry figured it was appropriate to give the phone a _what the fuck_ look because Oliver was being more of an idiot than usual. “Wow, for someone who wants me to have a conversation with him you sure are intent on making me want nothing to do with you. And it hardly counts as sneaking when you aren’t trying to hide it, and even if I was cheating on you with Leo I’d be shocked you looked past your mirror long enough to notice. You’re a self-obsessed asshole and frankly I don’t even know why I liked you. Well okay, you’re hot and sex was good but like that’s it and I could find that anywhere,” he says reasonably. He wondered what Leo was like in bed but quickly banished the thought from his mind because he had better things to focus on. Like not that.

Oliver laughs at him and Barry frowns because he hadn’t said anything he found particularly amusing. “Oh please, you can not find that anywhere. Be honest Barry, what the hell does this ‘Leo’ jave that I don’t? Abso-fucking-lutly nothing,” Oliver says.

“He knows my favorite color, and my favorite superhero movie, and my full name. You probably don’t know any of those things,” he says. The last time Oliver had proven he had any knowledge of Barry was… was… he actually couldn’t remember.

“What the hell does knowing you’re favorite color have to do with anything?” Oliver snaps, “and it isn’t like you know those things about me,” he says.

Barry rolls his eyes, “your favorite colour is green, any shade unless it looks like baby puke, you don’t like super hero movies because you think that they all follow the same story line and are a waste of time, and your full name in Oliver Jonas Queen. Name one thing about me, Oliver, that you know and I will happily continue a relationship with you,” he says, full well knowing that wasn’t going to happen.

“You like cats,” Oliver says, grasping at straws.

“I’m a dog person, and if you’ll excuse me I’m going to hang up and call you back never,” he says and hangs up as Joe pushes the door to his room open.

“You okay?” he asks, “Oliver seems to be calling an awful lot, you wanna talk about that?”

“What’s the point? We both know you can’t do anything unless Oliver actually hurts me so what’s there to talk about? And I’m fine,” he says perhaps with a bit too much attitude. He was bitter about his father still and maybe it wasn’t Joe’s fault, but he didn’t help and that made Barry angry. He could have _done_ something and he didn’t and now he wanted to pretend like he could actually do something for Barry when really, what the hell was he supposed to do?

Joe looks shocked with the attitude he gets and for a second Barry feels guilty but he quickly discards the feeling. Why should he be the one feeling guilty here when all he did was state the facts? “I… Barry that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear about what’s going on, I’m worried about you,” Joe says, looking genuinely concerned.

“I broke up with Oliver, which is what everyone wanted so I don’t know why you’re all concerned about me now. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t I guess,” he mumbles.

“Barry…” Joe says, trailing off before he sighs, sensing that there wasn’t much he could do to get through to Barry at the moment. He leaves and Barry lets out a breath of relief that he was alone, finally, with his thoughts.

When Joe brings him tea roughly a half an hour later Barry feels horribly guilty for being so rude when Joe was just trying to help and this time he can’t shake the feeling.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had some extra muse for this project so her y'all go! :)

Barry sits on the edge of a bridge, poised over the river than ran through Central. It was peaceful there at two a.m with no one there to bother him. He needed somewhere to think about things and home wasn’t the best place with Iris and Joe breathing down his neck, not that they meant any harm, and his friends did the same thing. They were all doing their best to help, he knew, but they weren’t doing much good and he was tired of pointing it out. He was sure he did the same things they did, not on purpose, because it was hard sometimes to help people when you only knew what worked for you.

He did this somewhat frequently, when his brain was moving far too fast for him to sleep. He wasn’t sure of Joe knew about it or not because sneaking in and out seemed a whole lot easier when Oliver wasn’t around. If Joe knew he didn’t care because Barry never seemed to get in trouble for it. Iris had no idea, he knew for sure, because she would have confronted him about it if she did. “Barry?” someone asks and he turns to find Leo walking across the bridge, “what the hell are you doing out here at two a.m?” he asks.

Barry snorts, “seems like kind of a dumb question when you’re also here at two a.m, don’t you think?” he asks, smiling just a bit. He didn’t have enough energy to muster an actual smile and thankfully Leo doesn’t seem to be expecting one.

“Guess so,” Leo says, “want company?” he asks.

“Sure,” Barry says, shrugging. They sit in silence for a while, content with not talking to one another and simply looking out at the water. It was nice, not feeling obligated to talk to someone when he didn’t much feel like holding up his end of the conversation. He knew that people didn’t do the things they did on purpose to annoy him or mistreat him or whatever, but sometimes when he told them to leave him alone he actually meant it. He appreciated the support but he would appreciate it more if they also knew when to back off.

“Are you cold?” Leo asks after a while.

“I’m fine,” Barry says, falling back on his go-to reaction.

“You’re shivering,” Leo says.

Barry shrugs, “I’m fine, really,” he says. Being cold helped him think sometimes, he was a bit too cold now, but he could deal with it. He had a nice warm bed waiting at home, he wasn’t even sure Leo had that much. He doesn’t expect a sweater to be draped over his shoulders a few seconds later and the warmth is welcoming. “What about you?” he asks. It was simple logic that if he was cold obviously Leo would be without the sweater.

Leo shrugs, “I’m fine,” he says.

“But-” he starts but Leo cuts him off.

“If you can say it so can I,” he says and really, what was Barry supposed to say to that? They go back to sitting in silence and Barry pulls the sweater tighter around him, smiling to himself. “Are you alright?” Leo asks a few minutes later and Barry turns to face him, drawn in by the genuine concern in his tone. The look on his face matched his concern and he seemed to be watching Barry intently, like he was trying to determine if Barry’s answer would be a lie or not.

“I’m okay; I just… need some time for myself, to myself. I don’t really get that without actually making an effort to look for it, which is why I snuck out at a stupid hour in the night. No one’s around to bother me with stupid questions,” he says, “what about you?” He already knew Leo’s father was abusive; Cisco already had his suspicions from spending time with Lisa, though Barry didn’t say anything about it. It wasn’t his story to tell. Hopefully Leo just needed space or something or some other reason that didn’t result from abuse.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” Leo says, mostly dodging the question.

“Just because you can handle it doesn’t mean you have to,” he says quietly. Leo gives him a sharp look and he goes back to looking out over the water and eventually the sudden tension dissipates slowly.

*

He was dead tired from being out all night, he hadn’t slept all that much, and somehow Barry looked refreshed and chipper. God, he wanted that talent, he’d already snapped at Mick like five times and the poor bastard hadn’t even done anything. “I have your sweater,” Barry says, smiling at him like a ray of sunshine.

“Keep it,” he says, not much wanting the thing back at the moment, or ever really. He didn’t like that sweater anyways, and it looked better on Barry. Barry, thankfully, seems to accept this and pulls the sweater out of his bag and puts it on, offering him a small side smile that was almost coy. He could see why Oliver stuck around so long, there was just… _something_ about Barry that made him pleasant to be around. Probably because he didn’t feel judged, or like he had to talk to fill the silence like he did with near everyone else.

Lisa was probably going to tease him about it for years to come, but Cisco was giving him some pretty good teasing material too so she’d be wise to leave it. She seemed to genuinely like the guy, claimed he was special or rare or something. He didn’t see it but Lisa didn’t see what he saw in Barry and he trusted her judgement enough to accept that whatever she saw, it was there, even if she was the only one who could see it. He watched them together too and he had to admit he had underestimated Cisco’s intelligence. It was clear that Cisco was paying attention, and more than that he listened, even when Lisa didn’t use words. People, in his experience, were not good at reading body language, particularly when that body language was telling them something they didn’t want to hear. Cisco though, he didn’t seem to have any problems with that and Lisa needed someone who had a half a brain.

Mick catches up to him quickly after class, “we go to class,” he says and he looks at Mick like he’s stupid because yes, they went to class. “We never go to class,” he clarifies, “why do we go to class? Your new project is _not_ that important,” he says.

He gives Mick a dirty look and he seems to realize his mistake, “Barry isn’t a project, but you’re right about class. The hell should we suffer with math? You can’t even manage to pass shit half the time and I don’t need a class to teach me how to do the material, it’s simple. We should get food or something,” he says. Mick squints at him, “what? I’m hungry; we can raise hell _after_ I eat.”        

“So, what’s the deal with the boy toy?” Mick asks, pushing his limits again but this time he had food so he was more willing to forgive.

The burger works as a great way to stall before he had to answer Mick’s question, truthfully he didn’t really have one. “I like him,” he says finally, having taken up far too much time stalling and Mick knew it.

“So? You like plenty of people, you don’t give them your sweaters,” Mick points out.

“Your point?” he asks, glaring at Mick in the hopes that he’d shut up about Barry.

He has no such luck. “Look, I’m just trying to figure out if I’m supposed to be nice to him or whatever. Also I’ve kind of always wanted an excuse to beat the shit out of Oliver Queen, your new pet provides,” he says.

“I’ll kick your ass if you refer to Barry as anything but his name again, asshole. And we are not going to go looking for trouble in the wrong neighborhood, I have a criminal record already, I don’t need to add to it,” he says. Neither did Mick, setting a few fires was more than enough and he had taken the wrap for half of them. Mick’s parents weren’t pleased with the first charge and his family was pretty well off, it looked bad if their kid was involved in shit like that so he figured he’d spare Mick being the family shame. Turned out he was about as dumb as a sack of hammers with no heads so he hadn’t much succeeded in his endeavor but he had at least tried.

“Fine, but if you get an opportunity call me, I don’t care about my criminal record, my parents are rich, they can pay cops off,” Mick says.

He snorts, “must be nice,” he mumbles. The only thing his asshole sperm donor was willing to do for him was kick his ass to teach him a ‘lesson’. He still wasn’t clear on what that lesson was supposed to be, and frankly neither did Lisa. Unless the lesson was to learn how to piss him off worse than Lisa had to take her beating he was pretty sure he was lost. Whatever. Not like he needed the guy anyways, he and Lisa had been taking care of themselves since almost infancy.

“So am I supposed to be nice to the new guy or what?” Mick asks, raising an eyebrow. He knew a sore spot when he stepped on one, thank god, because even Mick wasn’t that stupid and he knew better than to offer to help. It never went well for anyone involved, least of all Mick. He didn’t need the guy’s charity and he wasn’t going to fucking take it no matter how much Mick might bitch at him for it.

He pulls out his best bitch face for Mick, “what do _you_ think?” he asks in the most condescending manner he could muster.

“Fine, be an asshole,” Mick says, “I’ll take it out your new boyfriend,” he says.

“Like fuck you will,” he says, almost cutting Mick off he reacted so fast.

“Please tell me you plan on fucking the guy soon, the sexual tension between the two of you is suffocating and grades are suffering,” he says, ignoring his previous comment.

“I am not going to get involved with someone who just got out of a relationship,” he says, especially not an abusive one. That shit fucked you up and he wasn’t going to contribute to whatever damage had been done to Barry by Oliver. Sure, Barry was cute enough, actually he was just his type, but he wasn’t willing to fuck Barry over for a second time after all the shit Oliver pulled with him. He would so take an opportunity to punch Oliver in the face so long as there were minimal chances he’d be charged for it, though. “And what do you mean your grades are suffering? I thought you were failing everything, art included, how do you get worse?” he asks, genuinely curious as to how Mick could have screwed _that_ up.

“I’m not saying you have to call him in the morning, hell, even if it’s just a quickie in the janitor’s closet. Please, put us all out of our misery,” Mick says. “And my grades went _up_ , idiot, I got an A on a science test the other day, my parents said they were _proud_ , it needs to end,” he says, looking horrified.

Len squints, “you’re… upset that your grades went up and your parents are happy with you? What the fuck, man?” What he wouldn’t give to have that, but then Mick wasn’t him and who the hell even knew why he felt the lingering need to try and impress his asshole father. That’s why he had such good grades, at least at first, now that was mostly due to good study habits that he never had been able to drop. He was very much a creature of habit and once he developed a routine he didn’t much like breaking it.

“If they’re proud then I must be doing what they want, which means I’m going to end up just like them and I’d rather light myself on fire than live some fucking Cookie Cutter White Suburban Life with a wife and two point five kids. _Fuck_ that. I like being the family disappointment, means I’m different,” he says. That had to be the most fucked up line of thinking he had ever encountered but this was Mick, that kind of thing was to be expected.

“Well if you plan on working at a job that isn’t some shitty minimum wage bullshit you might want to get into college,” he says.

“Limited thinking,” Mick says, waving off the thought, “I’m going to suck it up with my parents until they die off, probably under suspicious circumstances that won’t lead back to me, and then I’ll have my trust fund and I can lead my dream life as a criminal. Like the kind that gets a name, you know, I’d be like… Heatwave or something,” he says.

“That’s the fucking dumbest name I’ve ever heard,” he says, “and if we’re killing off parents we can start with mine. There’s only one, half the work, and no one will give a fuck if he dies. We can do a practice run and see what the cops find suspicious and then _not_ do that with yours. And I fully expect payment,” he says, leaning back in his seat.

“Good idea, so we’ll kill your dad off first to case things out then move on to bigger fish. And I like Heatwave, you’d be Captain Cold because you’re a cold ass bitch,” Mick tells him and he throws a fry in Mick’s general direction. He looks over and finds some lady staring at them in shock, probably having overheard their plans to kill their parents.

“First things first,” he says, “we gotta kill the witness,” he says and nods at the lady, who all but runs from the building. Mick just about pisses himself laughing.

*

“No,” a familiar voice says beside him. Barry looks over to find Leo standing beside him glaring at his chest in distaste. He looks down at his shirt, figuring maybe he dropped something on it or something but finds that it was perfectly clean.

“No… what?” he asks, frowning.

“I will not be seen in public with you wearing… _that_ ,” Leo says, pointing at his shirt. He looks back down to the illuminati symbol that graced his shirt, except instead of the caption underneath reading ‘illuminati’ it read ‘illuminaughty’.

“I think it’s cute and fun and you can’t tell me what to wear,” he says in a haughty tone, sticking his nose in the air.

“Oh fuck no, first Mick decides that overalls, _overalls_ , Barry, were acceptable and then you come at me with this crap? I don’t think so, Scarlet. I’ve got standards and that needs to come off _immediately_ ,” he says, crossing his arms like he fully expected Barry to follow his orders. That was cute; Barry didn’t follow anyone’s orders.

“Well if you wanted me to take my clothes off you could have just said so,” he says, grinning.

“You can keep the pants, but that shirt needs to go back from the hell from whence it came,” Leo says, looking hilariously offended that Barry would wear such a thing. He had been curious to see if Leo would play along in the flirting but apparently not. That was disappointing, Leo had kind of grown on him and he was just Barry’s type. But then Barry’s type was the kind of fucked up bad boy and last time that hadn’t worked out so well for him.

“And what do you propose I do with it, hmm?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Sacrifice it to whatever demon spawned that thing,” Leo says and Barry breaks, finally starting to laugh because he had never met someone who was so offended by a shirt that wasn’t a school official dress coding Iris.

“You are so dramatic,” he says, “my shirt is not a demon hell spawn, it’s quirky.”

“It isn’t quirky, liking coffee shops that are run by someone other than a massive corporation is quirky, _that_ ,” he says, pointing at Barry’s shirt, “is the reason God has given up all hope in humanity ever exiting the shitty stage.”

Barry couldn’t help but laugh harder because of all the things God could have witnessed that would have resulted in giving up hope in humanity his _shirt_ was the final straw according to Leo. “Oh my god, you are such a drama queen but hey, if you’re going to be royalty at least your cute and not rocking the inbred look,” he says between giggles.

“Yeah, pretty sure the inbred one is Mick, and I am not being dramatic, that thing probably will probably be the downfall of humanity. Do you want to be responsible for that?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. Iris chooses then to show up and Barry’s phone goes off, repeatedly. While he checks his phone Iris and Leo bond over the hideousness of his shirt, agreeing that it was probably going to cause a zombie apocalypse or worse. They were being ridiculous, it was _cute_ and they needed to accept it.

Laurel’s texts though, that was not so cute and it shocked him so much he didn’t actually have words so he just sent a picture of his face.

_Oh my fucking god Barry_

_He fucked my SISTER_

_WHICH IS WHY SHE JUMPED CONTINENTS AND HASN’T BEEN BACK_

_Now shes a fucking lesbian_

That was wild from start to finish and he wasn’t sure who he didn’t want to be right now, Sarah, Laurel, or Oliver. Laurel was obviously the most hurt, but Sarah _had_ to be the most guilt-ridden, and Oliver was going to be fucking dead by morning because Barry was not talking Laurel out of killing him. At this point he more than deserved it.

_Sarah’s probs bi not a lesbian_

_But I mean yikes_

_Wtf_

What the hell was he supposed to say to all of that? Laurel’s sister _slept with her boyfriend_ , who did that?

“What’s got you looking so horrified?” Iris asks, looking ready to kick someone’s ass, probably thinking the answer to her question was Oliver. In her defense she was half right.

“Laurel text and uh, turns out Sarah jumped continents because she slept with Oliver,” he says, wincing.

Iris goes from looking ready to kick ass to disgusted and horrified, “what a fucking bitch!” she yells, drawing the attention of the nearby students.

Leo frowns, “you talk to Laurel? Isn’t that Oliver’s girlfriend? Well, probably ex now, I hope she pushes him into a train,” he says.

“Okay but it was like two years ago almost, I’m sure Sarah has changed, I mean she came back and told Laurel, that has to count for something. And yes, Leo, Laurel is Oliver’s probably ex-girlfriend. We’re pretty good friends though I’m sure in some weird alternate universe we hate each other,” he says.

“She _slept with Laurel’s boyfriend_ , Barry, that is unforgivable! I would _never_ and Oliver was on my three list before I found out what a piece of shit he was! Oh, what a _scum bag_!” she says, looking disgusted but whether that was at Oliver or Sarah he wasn’t sure. Probably both.

“Are you sure _this_ isn’t the weird alternate universe?” Leo asks, squinting at him.

“It’s been two years, I’m sure she’s not like that anymore. And Laurel says she’s a lesbian now?  I don’t know. And no, this is not the weird alternate universe; Laurel and I are just smart enough to know that blaming the person Oliver was cheating on us with it fucking stupid when it was _Oliver_ who broke the terms of our relationship. So, we’re mature,” he says. And they got along really well; if it wasn’t for the gay thing he’d totally just date Laurel.

_I dnt care wat Sarah is!_

_Unless shes dead, then I’ll be happy!_

_I cant fucking believe this!_

Yeah, Laurel was pretty pissed. He didn’t think that telling her that Sarah was obviously trying to make some sort of amends by telling her about her sleeping with Oliver was a good idea. It seemed clear to him that Sarah was at least trying not to be whoever she was when she decided that sleeping with her sister’s boyfriend was a good idea but that isn’t what Laurel needed to hear right now. He knew what it was like to be filled with rage over some injustice that happened to screw up his whole life and logic was the last thing Laurel needed.

_Fuck the girlfriend_

_Is she cute?_

_If nothing else you know she has good taste in looks_

He hoped that Sarah’s girlfriend was not as shitty as Oliver and that Laurel wouldn’t actually take that advice.

_Im fucking trying_

_Shes actually really nice_

_Wat the fuck did sarah do so get the good luck_

_Fuck her I hope she dies in a hole_

Barry winces at the texts and figures maybe it’s best to let Laurel rage for a while before he attempted actually talking to her. When she was in this kind of mood she was impossible to talk to. “Well,” he says to no one in particular, “I guess at some point I’m going to have to talk Laurel out of killing her sister, I’ll let her kill Oliver though,” he says.

Leo shakes his head, “you are so fucking nice you could be sainted, seriously, who is so nice that they’re friends with the girl their boyfriend is cheating on them with? Like no one, you are something else, Scarlet.” Leo looks impressed and Barry feels surprisingly happy about having his approval, which probably wasn’t a good thing upon reflection but he pushes that away to bask in the praise.

“If successfully talks Laurel out of killing her sister that’ll be his first miracle,” Iris says, shaking her head.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this pretty sleep deprived, let me know if anything's wonky spelling wise and I'll do a comb through for mistakes :)

Barry didn’t really expect a whole lot when he opened the door, all he wanted was some milk so he could eat cereal for breakfast, but instead he got an armful of crying Laurel. “I did something really stupid,” Laurel says through her tears.

“Okay if you killed Oliver you can’t tell me, I want plausible deniability,” he says, patting Laurel’s back in an attempt to comfort her.

Laurel pulls away to glare at him through her tears and snot, “I didn’t kill Oliver, what kind of person do you think I am?” she asks, offended.

“A logical one, who wouldn’t want Oliver dead if they were in your situation?” he asks.

She sighs and wipes at her eyes and nose with a tissue, “I didn’t kill Oliver, I kind of want to though but I’m not going to jail for killing him off. So no the dumb thing I did was not killing Oliver, or Sarah before you ask. I… can I come in?” she asks, still sniffling.

He steps aside and lets her come in before ushering her up to his room and handing her a box of Kleenex for her troubles. “So, the dumb thing you did, I’m sure it wasn’t that bad,” he says and winces when this starts a whole new round of tears.

“I’m such an idiot,” she says, sniffling badly.

“No you aren’t, I’m sure it wasn’t _that_ bad, I mean we’ve been dealing with Oliver for like two years, well you have, I’m six months behind but still. Compared to him I’m sure whatever you did was saint worthy,” he reasons.

Laurel doesn’t say anything for a few minutes while she gathers herself and flops into Barry’s desk chair. “Okay so I was pretty pissed off about Oliver, obviously, so I decided to be an asshole back and,” her voice cracks, “and I went to Tommy’s. I figured he’s just like Oliver, he wouldn’t be like attached to sex or whatever but no. No, afterwards, and this isn’t even a joke Barry, he confessed his _love_ for me. Apparently he’s been sitting around for the last two years hoping I’d realize what a shitty person Oliver is and that I would leave him or whatever and he was like _so happy_ that I went to him and now I broke his heart,” she says and bursts into tears again.

He can’t help it, he laughs, and Laurel throws a pen off his desk at him, “stop laughing you asshole I broke Tommy’s heart!” she says, offended.

“I’m guessing you didn’t tell him why you slept with him?” he asks and Laurel nods, “then don’t worry about it, all you have to do is meet him in the middle. Tell him why you decided that seducing him was a good plan but then tell him that if he wasn’t too pissed off at you that you’d like to get to know him in a non-romantic- non-sexual setting. Boom, if it works out, great! If not, you’ve let him down easy and you were honest, simple as that,” he says.

Laurel looks so pissed off that for a second he thought maybe that advice wasn’t as god as he thought it was. “Oh my god I have been agonizing about that for hours and you clear it up in like five fucking minutes. Unbelievable! I… thanks though, I felt like a really huge asshole because Tommy’s only sort of an ass and he didn’t deserve that,” she mumbles, looking down at her lap.

“Either way Laurel, you had no way of knowing that he had feelings for you, breaking his heart wouldn’t have been your fault. I mean sleeping with the guy was a really stupid idea no matter how anyone feels about you but it isn’t like you knew that _then_ slept with him to get back at Oliver. That would have been cruel,” he says. Laurel wasn’t the type to do something like that anyways; she was vengeful yeah, but not usually at the cost of the emotions of people that weren’t what she would consider deserving. Hence her being upset about accidentally screwing Tommy over.

She sighs and sits back in his chair, “yeah I guess. But I didn’t want to hurt his feelings and I didn’t know what to do and you always know what to do so I came here,” she says. “I wish I always knew what to do like you do, you’re so god at this stuff,” she tells him earnestly. That was sweet, really, but he was pretty much only strong on the surface. Just because he didn’t let it show didn’t mean things didn’t get to him, it just meant he was really _really_ good at hiding stuff. He had a lot of practice, after all, having had to deal with his father’s murder trial, all the media coverage, all the other crap that went with it.

“Thanks, but I’m not as good at dealing with things as you think, I mean it’s nice that you think I’m so good at all this but I’m mostly just good at acting,” he says. He was thankful for it too or there would have been way too many times where he was sure Oliver would exploit his weaknesses. He did it with Laurel enough, why not him too? But he was good at pretending like everything was fine and that didn’t leave Oliver with much to work with.

*

Lisa has started sitting with them at lunch and Barry wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He liked her well enough but she felt… predatory and Caitlin agreed. She did give him a break up playlist though so he had resolved to give her a chance regardless of his feeling like he was a deer sitting in front of a hungry lion. Cisco, when he had brought it up, had insisted that he was nuts and that Lisa was not eyeing him up as food. He was about eighty percent sure that Cisco was blinded by love but he let Cisco believe himself, he was happy and he and Lisa seemed to work well together and that was all that mattered.

“So,” Caitlin asks, perching on the edge of the counter in the office, “how’s Leo?” She looked coy while she was asking the question, like she already knew the answer and she was just asking to reaffirm her own opinion.

“I have no idea, we don’t talk often,” he mostly lies. They talked fairly regularly but that didn’t mean they were interested in each other romantically or otherwise. Cisco had started playing that game he played with Caitlin about dating Ronnie with him while Lisa watched on in amusement.

Caitlin seems to consider his answer for a second before she decides to speak, “I’m going to tell you something but you can’t tell Cisco,” she says seriously, switching the topic quickly.

“Uh, okay?” he says, hoping it wasn’t something terrible that he was going to be morally obligated to tell Cisco about.

“I started dating Ronnie like six months ago,” she says and Barry all but flies out of his seat in excitement.

“Oh my god, why haven’t you said anything? Was Cisco right? How’s your relationship?” he asks, barely restraining himself from asking like five hundred more questions.

“We bond over his weird obsession with my love life, I didn’t want to ruin our good fun and yes, he was right. And Ronnie and I are doing just fine, thanks for asking,” she says, grinning, “minus the not telling my friends about him thing, I don’t think he understands my bonding with Cisco. But now you know so maybe that’ll help him feel a little less self-conscious.” Huh, he hadn’t taken Caitlin for the secretive type but then that was probably how she had managed to fool them all, she was no moron.

“You and Cisco do have a special bond,” he agrees, “but I’m sure if you told him the two of you would come up with something new to bond over. You’re creative people, I’m sure you’ll find something and then maybe Ronnie won’t feel so bad. That’s so exciting though! I’m happy for you,” he says meaningfully.

She smiles at him, “I knew you would be, you’re always so supportive. So seriously, you and Leo, how’s that going?” she asks and now Barry gets it. She seemed to think he wasn’t saying anything because he didn’t want to so she had established some rapport so he’d talk.

“I literally have nothing to tell you Caitlin, I mean we talk sometimes but nothing… I don’t even know what you’re looking for to be honest,” he says. That wasn’t totally true, she obviously thought he was in some sort of relationship with Leo but he wasn’t, at the moment they were just friends. Not that he’d mind changing that, but Leo didn’t seem interested and that was alright with him. He probably shouldn’t date so soon after that Oliver disaster anyways, both he and Laurel needed time. Thankfully for Laurel her talk with Tommy had gone really well and he was more than happy to wait to see if she was even interested. And even better, Oliver was pissed off about it, and even better than that Tommy had told him to shut up because he had done it to himself. He wasn’t going to lie, that made him happy even though it probably shouldn’t.

Caitlin seems to believe him, thankfully, and nods. “Alright, but if you need someone to talk to I’m here. And for the record you and Leo would be a far better match than you and Oliver, I can see that you two are really compatible together,” she says, squeezing his shoulder and walking off to do her office duties.

*

He hadn’t really expected to be accosted outside of his workplace again, and certainly not by Sarah Lance. “Hey! Um, I don’t know if you know who I am but uh-” Sarah starts, sounding awkward.

“I know who you are,” he interrupts, “but I can’t imagine what you’re doing here talking to me. What reason could you possibly have to be here?” he asks, genuinely curious.

Sarah fidgets for a moment and she sighs, “god I don’t know, I don’t know what I expect you so do about Laurel but I just… I just want my sister back,” she says, sounding defeated.

Barry felt bad for her, he did, but that didn’t really change the circumstances for Laurel hating her. “No offense but you slept with her boyfriend, she’s probably going to hate you forever,” he says and winces when Sarah looks like he just slapped her.

“But… but I mean technically you did too and she likes you, loves you actually, she talks about you all the time. I know that things aren’t exactly the same but… but how did you get past all that… _hate_ ,” she says, frowning.

By not being related to Laurel, for one, but he doesn’t bother saying that because Sarah isn’t an idiot, she knows that. “The situation is completely different, Oliver told me that they broke up but he was acting weird and Laurel and I ended up tracking each other down, we were both spurned and we had a common enemy; Oliver. Not that we really capitalized on the revenge thing, we totally should have, but still. I had no connection to her before and I had no idea I had wronged her, like she had no idea she had wronged me, we were in the same position and we bonded. You though, well, you aren’t stupid I’m sure you can guess why you hurt so much more than I ever did,” he says.

Sarah sighs, running her fingers through her hair, “I know but I just couldn’t help but wonder if maybe you knew something that I didn’t or found some other way around her defenses or something. I know it sounds stupid but I didn’t think she’d hate me,” she says quietly, looking at the ground.

“Of course you didn’t,” he says softly, “you figured she’d still see you as her sister and why would you think any different? This isn’t your fault, you tried to do the right thing, I’m sure at some point she’ll see that and maybe she’ll forgive you then,” he says.

She snorts, “you literally just said she’d probably never forgive me, can’t take it back now,” she says, smiling grimly.

“Laurel is equal parts vengeful and forgiving, I mean look how long she put up with Oliver’s crap, clearly she has a huge capacity to forgive. It’s just a matter of whether or not she’ll forgive you when she sees that you were trying to do right by her,” he says. He didn’t have much faith Laurel would ever forgive Sarah but there was a chance she would, eventually, maybe. Probably not, Laurel was more than a little betrayed by Sarah’s actions and understandably so, even if Sarah was trying to do something right here.

“At least you see that I was trying to do something good, dad told me I should have kept my mouth shut but I wasn’t going to walk around knowing I did that to Laurel without ever telling her, neither of us deserves that,” she says.

“I agree whole heartedly, and your dad gives out some terrible advice, no offense. You did the right thing but that doesn’t usually come with happy consequences,” he knew that more than most. He had told the truth about his mother’s murder and that had gone wrong in every way possible and all he had wanted was proper justice. Sarah wanted the same thing for Laurel and he felt for her, even if her own decisions in the matter were horrible.

“Thanks,” Sarah says, swiping a tear off her face, “I actually kind of needed to hear that. I mean Nyssa said that too but she’s supposed to be supportive, that’s what sponsors do,” she says, realizing too late what she just said. “Please don’t tell anyone that, everyone just assumed I was dating Nyssa. Well I am dating Nyssa but they don’t know about the sponsor thing. I didn’t want to worry anyone and there’s a history of alcoholism in our family and… just don’t say anything, please,” she says.

“I’m not going to tell anyone you’re a recovering alcoholic, that’d be terrible of me. You should consider telling Laurel though, it’ll put a whole new spin on why you told her,” he says, “not that you have to obviously. But it might help humanize you a little because right now she kind of thinks you’re the literal devil.”

Sarah laughs harshly, “the literal devil? She’s a bit dramatic sometimes,” Sarah says and yeah, Laurel was a little over the top sometimes. “Do you actually think that would help? Telling her? To be honest it was sort of why I started drinking in the first place, I called home once and she said that she missed me, that I was the best sister ever and I just… broke I guess. It was so untrue but I couldn’t tell her over the phone, which was why I came back and Nyssa’s been so supportive. I can’t believe Laurel hit on her though, I did not see that coming I have to admit,” she says.

Barry laughs, “sorry, I may have told her to hit on Nyssa,” he says and Sarah gives him a look, “it was a joke! Mostly, sort of, I didn’t expect her to follow through she’s straight!” he says in his own defense. “But all that other stuff about your, um, drinking and stuff. That’s all like really important information for Laurel, I mean you literally crossed an ocean to tell her something that made her hate you because you didn’t want to disrespect her further by telling her over the phone or something. That’s actually really sweet and considerate, Laurel probably won’t want to see it but it’s undeniable. I could talk to her, if you wanted,” he says.

She perks up a little at that, “you’d talk to her about me? After I explain the situation fully? That would be great, she thinks the sun rises and sets on your ass,” she says, sounding grateful.

Barry squints, “that’s such a weird saying,” he says, “but I’ll talk to her for you, I mean it can’t be good to hate someone forever and that’s where this is headed.” 

*

He frowns at the brownie that Barry has left on his desk. Barry looks at him expectantly and he raises and eyebrow, “oh come on, don’t tell me you aren’t curious to see why I ate ten of these suckers hungover full well knowing I’d feel like crap after,” he says, pushing the brownie closer to him. he was actually curious to see why Barry would do something so stupid but that didn’t mean he was going to eat strange food. He learned his lesson that one time he ate Mick’s cookies and ended up really, _really_ high. It hadn’t even been pleasant; he had no fucking clue why people wasted their time and money.

Mick stalks into the room and kicks the person that was sitting in front of his and Barry’s seats out of their spot, glaring as the kid scurried away. Iris comes in shortly thereafter and glares at the person next to Mick expectantly, “you either move or I’ll sit on you, too,” she threatens. Eventually the student moves, glaring at Barry as they went.

“How come I got glared at?” he asks defensively.

“Because you’re the centre of this seat drama,” he says. Barry sticks his tongue out at him and he rolls his eyes fondly.

“You gunna eat that brownie? Because I will if you aren’t,” Mick says, eyeing said food in anticipation.

“Keep your eyes to yourself, it’s my brownie,” he says, pulling the food closer.

“I’ll fight you for it,” Mick says, dead serious.

He considers it for a second and shrugs, “yeah, why not,” he says and goes to get out of his seat when Iris sighs loudly and produces a container of brownies.

“I have more, there’s no need to fight over that one,” she says, rolling her eyes at them. Mick takes the entire container and turns in his seat to ignore the rest of them in favor his new found breakfast. “You aren’t eating all of those,” Iris says, crossing her arms and glaring at Mick.

“Gunna take them back, West? I’ll fight you too, I don’t care if you’re a girl, you look like you could fight,” he says, sizing her up.

Iris smacks him, “I am not fighting you for the damn brownies, you ever want more of those you’ll leave two for me,” she says, negotiating her way into keeping her food.

“Scared?” Mick asks, grinning.

“No, idiot, I just got my hair done and I’m not ruining it for brownies, talk to me in two weeks and I’ll fight you then,” she says.

“I’ll hold you to that,” Mick says, calling her bluff.

“Good, I need to let off some steam,” Iris says, refusing to back down. He looks over to Barry but he seems more concerned about Mick than Iris. Oh he was so looking forward to seeing how that ended.

“Just eat the brownies,” Barry says, breaking up the petty argument. Mick seems content to do just that and he figures he might as well give the damn brownie a chance.

“Holy shit I think I just came,” Mick says and everyone recoils but mostly Iris, who looks downright disgusted. “Oh calm your delicate sensibilities, West, I didn’t mean it literally. What the fuck did you put in these things? Crack?” he asks, shoving the rest of the brownie into his mouth.

He takes a bite of his own brownie, figuring if Mick had managed to jam two more into his mouth in a matter of seconds they must be good. “Holy fuck this thing is like… amazing,” he mumbles around his bite of brownie.

“Told ya,” Barry sing-songs.

“Yeah whatever, Mick, pass some more of those things back here,” he says, kicking the back of Mick’s chair.

“Fuck you man, these babies are _mine_ ,” he says, curling his arm around the container protectively.

“I will literally fucking kill you to get more of these brownies, sacrifice one or lose your head,” he says, kicking Mick’s chair again.

“Excuse me?” the teacher says at the front of the room and he rolls his eyes, of course the teacher would have to walk in at that exact moment.

“Look, this thing is my new lord and savior and I am not stopping at just one so if you could kindly fuck off and mind your own business I have brownies to snatch,” he says, taking another bite of the brownie. God, that was good. Mick was right, obviously they were chalked full of some sort of drug.

“To the office!” the teacher snaps and he rolls his eyes, fine, whatever. He gets up and snatches the container out from under Mick as he goes, not expecting Mick to get out of his seat so fast and jump on him to get the brownies back. He barely manages to throw the container back and Barry manages to catch it, only losing one brownie as he did so. Impressive. “All of you, to the office!” the teacher yells, pointing to the door. Barry sighs and accepts his fate but Iris looks ready to fight him on it. In the end she doesn’t but she does glare hard so the teacher knew exactly what she thought of this.

He picks himself up, throwing Mick off as he does and the fucker totally goes for Barry and the brownies before apologizing. Barry’s smart though and he hops the desks, sufficiently getting out of Mick’s range quickly. Mick keeps going to collect the brownie that went overboard when Barry caught the container and picks a hair off of it before taking a bite.

“You’re disgusting,” Iris says, wrinkling her nose.

“I’ve excepted that about myself,” Mick says, taking another bite.

“Ugh. Way to go making friends with these people, Barry, this is the second time in two weeks we’ve ended up in the office, Dad’s going to kill us,” she says, smacking Barry’s arm.

“Tell him it was because of the brownies, he’ll understand,” Barry says, pulling a brownie from the container. He eyes the thing for a second before grabbing the container and running, Mick hot on his heels.

“See you later, Scarlet!” he yells over his shoulder as he rounds a corner quickly. Mick wasn’t quite as fast and he hit the wall, bouncing off before he righted himself and started running again.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know if there's any wonky spelling in here and I'll fix it :)

It turns out their homeroom teacher had finally had enough of their antics and so now they were spread out across the classroom. Iris suffered the worst, in Barry’s opinion, because she was stuck next to Hartley and he could practically see Iris’ soul leaving her body as Hartley chattered away to her about stuff she probably didn’t care about. The sorry soul next to Mick had been terrified into submission in seconds and refused to even look in his direction and the guy next to Leo didn’t even seem to notice he was there.

The next day Leo catches him before class, which was a feat considering he generally got to school and went straight to class to sleep until class actually started. “I made a bet with Mick that I can get kicked out of class in less than ten seconds and you’re going to help me out,” he says.

He was way too tired for this shit, “how is that even possible?” he asks. So he had the ability to only be noticed when he actually wanted to be noticed, but no one had the power to piss someone off so much they got kicked out of class in less than ten seconds.

“Just keep someone from sitting next to you,” he says and walks off, presumably to gloat to Mick about winning that bet. Barry shakes his head but manages to keep up his end of things by dropping his stuff into the seat next to him. Leo shows up and Barry pulls his stuff out of his seat for Leo to sit. He promptly gets kicked out of class as soon as his ass hits the seat.

“Told ya,” he says as he walks past Mick, who looks generally pissed off because that incident totaled seven seconds.

“Fuck you, I can’t even believe you managed that,” he says, promptly getting himself kicked out too.

“You know what, you go too,” the teacher says, kicking _Barry_ out for no reason.

“I haven’t even _done_ anything!” he says in his own defense.

“I’m sure you had something to do with this,” he says, gesturing to Mick and Leo, who seemed to be hanging around to see how this played out.

“I literally just existed, what the hell does that have to do with anything?” he snaps, irritated.

“Don’t use that tone with me,” the teacher snaps back, in the same tone. What was it with adults in snapping at people not to snap at them as if that would gain them any respect? Frankly all Barry had ever learned from that was that it was perfectly fine to be an asshole to people, at least so long as they were younger than you. If they weren’t then it you had to ‘respect’ them even if they clearly had no respect for you.

He wasn’t sure why, exactly, he was particularly irritated with that today but he was. “You know what, I know they say you are what you eat but if you could save the giant cock for the weekend, I’d be eternally grateful,” he snaps, picking up his stuff and stomping out as the class burst into uncontrollable laughter.

Leo and Mick follow him out laughing, “wow, Scarlet, who knew you had it in you,” he says. Mick was laughing far too hard to say much of anything.

“Neither did I but I don’t like him, he’s a bad person, and he probably hates puppies,” he mumbles. This makes Mick laugh even harder for some reason and Leo rolls his eyes at him fondly.

Patty wasn’t fond to find them all back again, including Iris, who appeared not long after they did. She sighs, “and what landed you all here now?” she asks, giving them annoyed looks.

“I sat down,” Leo says.

“I guess it might have been ‘fuck you’ but it isn’t like I said it to the teacher, which I think makes it fine,” Mick says, earning a judge-y look from Patty.

“I called the teacher a giant cock because he kicked me out for existing in Leo’s general proximity and conspiring to have Leo sit in a desk. I think he’s paranoid,” he says and Patty frowns but turns to Iris.

“I laughed,” she says.

She sighs, “I’m going to go talk to him because three of you got kicked out for no reason, and Barry, don’t call your teachers cocks, it’s not nice,” she says and leaves. They sit there in silence for a second before they burst out laughing.

*

Joe looks worried and Iris and Barry look indignant because they haven’t done anything wrong. “You two landed in the office three times in less than two weeks, clearly you must have done _something_ wrong,” he says, looking between the two for an explanation.

Iris and Barry were on each other’s side on this, they had done nothing wrong their teacher was an asshole and that was what they were sticking to. “We haven’t done anything wrong in class, except calling that asshole a cock and that was totally warranted,” Iris says, ratting him out. He gives her a betrayed look but she doesn’t seem to get it.

“Barry, you called your teacher a cock?” Joe says and the disconnect between Joe and the word ‘cock’ was weird and strangely amusing.

“He was going to kick me out of class for existing so I called him on it and he told me not to use a tone or something, which was stupid because he was being really disrespectful to me, thanks. So I called him a cock, it wasn’t my fault he was acting like one and I’m not sorry and I would do it again in a heartbeat, but like, on the street so I don’t get sent to the office,” he says. There was nothing wrong with calling teachers cocks on the street, and while he was at it he’d flip the asshole off too.

Joe tries not to laugh, Barry can see it, but apparently it was too much not to and he snorts a little before pulling himself back together, “do not tell the school I laughed,” he says in a serious tone. “Don’t call your teacher cocks to their face, Barry; I shouldn’t have to tell you that. And Iris, you must have done something so give it up,” he says.

Iris looks offended, “I sat down, made brownies that other people fought over, and laughed. I hardly think any of those things are worthy of punishment,” she says indignantly, nose in the air. She wasn’t wrong, really.

“You sat on some kid’s lap?” Joe asks, apparently having been notified of their actions via school phone call.

“He refused to move, it wasn’t like I gave him a lap dance in class. Sitting on people isn’t inherently sexual, it’s not my fault the school assumed we were heterosexual and into each other. That’s their problem, all I wanted to do was sit beside Barry and no, he wouldn’t cooperate with me so I sat on him,” she says, “I’m with Barry on not feeling bad for my actions.”

Joe closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, laughing slightly but he manages to keep his cool, “Don’t… sit on people, Iris. I shouldn’t have to tell you that, either. This should be common knowledge.”

When Iris seems sure they weren’t going to get into actual trouble she speaks again, “Barry didn’t even tell you the whole cock thing. He told the teacher that he knew that ‘you are what you eat’ but if he could leave the giant cock till the weekend he’d be eternally grateful,” she says. He smacks her because she totally sold him out twice in like ten minutes.

He doesn’t really expect Joe to laugh in earnest, full on doubling over with laughter. “Barry you can’t say that in class,” he says, wheezing out some form of parenting to make himself feel better.

“He’s a bad person and I don’t like him, he should know that he was acting like a total cock. It’s his job to teach us and we always end up kicked out of class for dumb reasons like existing,” he mumbles, unapologetic about his choice of words. That only serves to make Joe laugh harder though he does tell them to stop getting into trouble because he didn’t want any more phone calls.

*

“Look, I get that you’re an actual ray of sunshine and generally an all-around good person but not everyone is such a good person they can be sainted. I am _not_ forgiving Sarah,” Laurel says.

Barry sighs because fair enough, “fine, but at least consider what she has to say? It might surprise you,” he says. Poor Sarah had been trying, and failing, to talk to Laurel for like three days, which couldn’t possibly be easy and Laurel was having none of it. He understood, really, he wouldn’t want much to do with Iris if they were in this situation either but he would at least hear her out.

“Why should I?” Laurel says angrily, glaring at her salad.

“Because listening doesn’t mean forgiveness. Frankly I wouldn’t forgive her either, but listening to what she has to say isn’t a hardship to either of you and it’ll put a few things in perspective, trust me,” he says.

“She talked to you, didn’t she?” Laurel asks.

“Yes, and that’s why I’m telling you to listen, it doesn’t need to be a commitment. I get your anger, really, but hearing Sarah out isn’t going to kill you,” he says.

Laurel doesn’t look convinced, “fine, I’ll listen but I am not forgiving her. Like _ever_. So anyways- oh that sonofabitch!” Laurel snaps and Barry follows her line of sight to find Oliver of all people kissing some blonde that looked vaguely familiar.

“Why am I not surprised?” Barry asks to no one in particular.

“I’m going to kick his _ass_ ,” Laurel snaps and Barry only just manages to hold her back.

“Look, we can wait until he leaves and then we can _calmly_ ask the poor girl how long they’ve been dating. Maybe it hasn’t been that long, maybe they started dating after we broke up, you don’t know,” Barry says. Laurel accuses him of being a saint again but she does agree to wait it out until Oliver leaves.

They wander over to the store the blonde went into and Barry realizes why he recognized her, “oh hey Felicity!” he says, walking over to greet her properly, “how are you?” They went to the same comic book store and hit it off in a weird way when they started fighting over the last Flash comic they had left. She may have punched him, and he definitely did not bite her to try and extract the comic from her before some jackass stole the comic from underneath of them and ran off with it. They developed a weird friendship after that, including the weird guy who ran off with the comic because he seemed to have figured out if he left them fighting over the comic long enough one of them would drop it and he’d swoop in and steal it. Ray was an asshole.

Laurel smacks him for being polite and decides it was necessary for her to take over. “So you’re dating Oliver Queen hmm. For how long, exactly?” she asks, looking vaguely like she was going to hop the counter and rip poor Felicity’s head off.

“Ignore her, she’s mostly harmless. But in all seriousness though, answer the question,” he says.

Felicity edges away from Laurel towards Barry, not that that would have done her any good if Laurel did decide to strangle her. “Like eight months, why?” she asks slowly, eyes on Laurel.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he and Laurel snap in sync, “it’s not your fault,” he throws in so she didn’t feel so threatened.

“I’m going to kill him,” Laurel says, “actual murder; dad will help me cover it up. You in on it?” she asks and Barry was about eighty percent certain she was actually serious about killing Oliver.

“Um. We… probably shouldn’t commit murder?” he says, his voice rising as if that was a question. It should not have been a question.

“ _Probably_?” Felicity asks, looking at them like they were nuts. That was fair, Barry supposed, they were acting very weird.

“Look,” he says, “Oliver dated Laurel for like two years, me for a year and a half, and you eight months, only on all these relationships happened at once so. We’re kind of pissed, but not at you, this isn’t your fault,” he says because it wasn’t and he didn’t want Felicity to feel guilty for something that wasn’t her fault. “Honestly if I didn’t genuinely want him dead right now I’d be impressed with his ability to somehow juggle three relationships at once plus the rest of his life. I mean the travel time alone really, and who can seriously do _that_ much fucking? Does he ever take a break? Or have a refractory period? And how did he manage to _never_ cross paths with either me of Felicity on dates when this is a reasonably small city? I’m mad, but this shows some serious intelligence,” he says, frowning and trying to work out the logistics in his head.

“Well, we never crossed paths because we usually went out of town for dates. Don’t know about the refractory period thing though and I am genuinely wondering about that because if we _all_ had active sex lives-” Laurel cuts Felicity off.

“Are we seriously trying to figure out how Oliver’s dick works instead of figuring out how to rip it off?” she asks, looking at them like they were nuts.

“It’s a legit question, Laurel; I’m genuinely impressed with this. Also I’m really mad, what did I do to deserve this? Haven’t I suffered enough in life? Wait, why aren’t _you_ mad?” he asks Felicity, who looks like a deer caught in the headlights for a second before she bursts into tears.

“I’m so sorry I knew about you both but I didn’t care and also he made you two out to be like the literal devil and now I know he’s lying because I actually like you, Barry,” she says, sniffling loudly.

Laurel takes a deep breath and for that Barry was eternally grateful because he wasn’t sure he’d hold her back if she decided to strangle Felicity. “Okay. I understand the appeal Oliver brings, I get it, I kind of want to murder you but I get it. We’re going to kill him, you in on it?” she asks. Barry raises an eyebrow in surprise because he didn’t think Laurel would be the voice of reason here, sort of.

“We probably shouldn’t kill Oliver, but I am getting revenge on this fuckbag if my life depends on it, I am tired of being nice. And before you say anything Laurel, the best revenge is the kind where the person has to live with the consequences. So, what are we going to do to make sure this asshole pays?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

They end up plotting revenge over lunch, which had to be the weirdest situation Barry had ever gotten himself into. “Look, I’m just saying, we shouldn’t just drop the murder thing, I think that’s viable,” Laurel says.

“We aren’t killing Oliver, Laurel. But you know what we should do though, you should get Tommy in on it, he’s in love with you and stuff, we can use that,” he says.

Laurel’s eyebrows shoot up, “you want to use Tommy’s feelings for me for you own nefarious purposes? Wow, you really are pissed,” she says, sounding surprised.

“He could be useful,” Barry reasons. Besides, he was sure Tommy would help them out a little and they could use it.

“I’m not dragging poor Tommy into this,” Laurel says, “he’s actually a nice person.”

“Fine then, no Tommy, but if you change your mind he could be super useful to our plans,” he says.

“What, pray tell, nefarious plans could you possibly be discussing in public, hmm?” Barry looks up to find Leo of all people looking down at him from behind his chair.

“We’re planning revenge on Oliver,” he says cheerily, grinning.

“And who’s this?” Felicity asks pleasantly. She had been somewhat resistant to Oliver revenge plans but she had come around when Laurel and Barry mentioned a few things they figured he did with her too. In their defense they were right.

“Barry’s new boyfriend, Leo. So how’s the Oscar?” Laurel asks, grinning.

“I will literally kill you if you ever call me that again, or make another Leonardo DiCaprio joke,” he says, looking mostly serious about that.

Barry snorts, “please, do what you want, but we all know Leo ends up dead in the water,” he says. He gets a dirty look but Leo remains silent about the DiCaprio joke, which Laurel loudly complains about.

*

“What does that _mean_ , Lisa?” he asks. He had no idea why he thought she was a viable source for dating advice considering her current date looked vaguely like a pug and acted like an over excited child with a shockingly high brain function but alright. It was either her or Mick and he’d ask his father for dating advice before he’d ask Mick and that was saying something.

“It means he’s clearly into you, trust me, I’m a Barry expert,” Cisco says, deciding his opinion was needed for no reason. He ignores Cisco’s likely faulty advice and looks back to Lisa.

“He is actually a Barry expert, Len, you probably should listen to his advice over mine,” Lisa says, betraying him deeply.

He rolls his eyes and glares at Cisco, who all but melts in his seat. Lisa kicks him under the table and he ignores it. “I’ll humor you, what exactly makes you think Barry has any interest whatsoever?” he asks. So the guy hadn’t denied they were dating, for all he knew Barry just forgot to say something, he did have a short attention span.

“Probably the fact that he _refused_ to admit he and Oliver were dating for like the first six months, he didn’t end up admitting to dating Linda until like a month after they broke up, and he was more okay with people assuming he was dating _Iris_ than Oliver. They’re practically siblings. Trust me, dude, if he didn’t deny it right away it means something. Let me know when you two finally get together though, Caitlin and I have a betting pool going and I want the money, I have college applications to pay for,” he says.

He squints at Cisco, who re-shrinks back into his seat, “you have a betting pool based on my dating habits?” he asks.

“Technically, yeah. it’s not that big though. Only like… half the school,” he says, shrinking further in his seat when he gets an extra heavy glare for that.

“Fuck _you_ getting the money from that dating pool, Len’s telling _me_ what’s going on first and _I’m_ getting that money,” Lisa says.

“Split it?” Cisco suggests, apparently deal set on getting at least some of the proceeds from the bet.

“Seventy thirty,” Lisa says in a tone that suggests that was non-negotiable.

Cisco shrugs, “thirty percent more than I had two seconds ago,” he says.

“Damn, probably could have gotten eighty percent,” Lisa mumbles, kicking herself for it now.

“Probably,” Cisco agrees. What a fucking idiot. Lisa probably would have given him an actual fair split but Cisco was too dumb end caught up to even try. Well, he supposed it was nice for Lisa.

Neither of them were getting that betting pool though, the first to find out would obviously be him and Barry so _they_ were getting the money, fuck Cisco very much. “So what do I do here?” he asks, irritated that he was taking advice from a guy that was wearing a shirt that said ‘fuck bitches get money’ in circular Gallifreyan.

“So… ask him out? Do you need like a step-by-step guide or something?” Cisco asks, frowning.

He was getting a little brave for his tastes, “you’re pushing your luck kid, don’t think my sister liking you means I won’t kick your ass,” he says.

“Yeah, but if you want Barry to actually like you you probably aren’t going to want to do that,” Cisco says.

“Something tells that when I tell him you made a betting pool out of our dating lives behind our back he probably won’t care,” he says and Cisco goes back to looking properly cowed. “That’s what I thought,” he says.

Now. Well, now he had to figure out what to do about this Barry situation, if anything. Oh who the hell was he kidding, he was going to do something about the Barry situation.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry an update took 80 years. This chapter isn't all that great but I did manage to get one done so! Accomplishment!

“Your idea of revenge is embarrassing,” Mick says, “glitter bombs?”

Barry looks offended, “okay first of all glitter is _impossible_ to get rid of and it was the closest to herpes as I was ever going to get so glitter it was. And two, if it blows up in his face I hope it gets in his eyes and that the glitter scratches his corneas,” he says in a surprisingly vengeful tone.

Mick considers this and then gives a nod of approval while Iris gives Barry a look. “I didn’t know the glitter was designed to harm,” she says.

“What? He gave me trust issues for life so I gave him a huge amount of glitter that I hope blinds him. If not then he has a shit ton of glitter to deal with and it’s red, he hates red,” Barry says, looking deeply invested in making Oliver uncomfortable in the nicest ways possible.

“If you want petty revenge stick shrimp behind the hub caps on his car. Shit smells nasty in two days or less,” he says. Mick laughs because they did that to his parents once and the results were glorious.

Barry perks up, “that’s a great idea! I’ll let Laurel and Felicity know. Speaking of, Felicity hacked his computer and wiped the whole thing minus his school assignments, which she replaced with random chapters of My Immortal, you know, the really bad Harry Potter fanfiction? Yeah,” he says and snickers.

He doesn’t expect to find that funny but he laughs so hard that Mick gives him a judgmental look for his efforts. It wasn’t that funny, really, but the thought of a teacher reading really bad fanfic was just too much to take. “Could you imagine Wells reading that? I mean Oliver doesn’t go here, but just imagine Wells reading bad fanfic,” he says and starts laughing all over again. This time at least Mick gets it and snickers, Iris rolls her eyes fondly and turns around, and Barry looks pleased with himself.

“See? I’m not bad at revenge,” he says proudly.

“Oh you are so terrible at revenge, but it’s so damn cute to watch you try,” Mick says and he kicks Mick’s chair, earning a dirty look for his efforts.

“I am not terrible at revenge I am sensible, which I think makes my revenge better than just punching someone out,” Barry says, giving Mick a pointed look.

“Nothing says revenge like a good old fashioned punch in the face,” Mick says. He was a simple guy though, simple things pleased him. Like ground brownies.

The teacher chooses to arrive then, glaring at the four of them sitting together but he lets it go in favor of teaching, thankfully. Not that they didn’t make copious amounts of efforts to be a disturbance, they did, because now they all at it in for this asshole and they were all intent on making him pay. They all got detentions for their efforts but it was _so_ worth it.

*

“I am so pissed off at Oliver,” Felicity says, looking righteously upset.

“I thought that was the point of revenge,” Laurel points out. They still seemed to be having get along problems but Barry suspected that was because they were so different as people and Felicity thought Laurel was abrasive and mean. Laurel thought Felicity was an absolute pushover so he supposed they were even.

“Okay well I thought you know what, _maybe_ he has an explanation. I mean it probably wouldn’t be a good one but you know, _something_ so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and gave him a call. It went to hell in a hand basket real fast and I said that we didn’t much appreciate being treated like door mats, and he asked what made any of us think we were that special to him. So I told him that his oral sex skills were embarrassing enough that he should feel bad and that assholes like him were a dime a dozen if they were worth that much,” she says, looking like she felt bad about this. She shouldn’t because that dime a dozen line was _hilarious_.

Laurel bursts out laughing, “wow, I didn’t know you had it in you! That’s hilarious. I didn’t think he was all that bad with oral though,” she says.

Felicity looks like she feels terrible, “oh honey, you haven’t had the good stuff,” she says, laying her hand over Laurel’s forearm, “I have a few numbers you can call to make a comparison though,” she says.

Laurel considers it for a moment before shrugging, “yeah alright, might as well.” That, is seems, turns their bad relationship right around because they go from finding the other generally irritating and grating to finding each other at least tolerable. Barry was happy to sit back and watch them flourish though, he thought it was sweet.

“So seriously, we’ve been nice, we sent _glitter bombs_ , it’s time to up our game because come on. He’s a trash person and I still think we should kill him off,” Laurel says.

“We are not going to kill Oliver, Laurel, even if he would have it coming to him.  We can come up with something better than that,” Barry says.

“Oh, we should burn down his house,” Felicity says and Laurel jumps on that.

Barry, however, is horrified, “ _Oliver_ sucks, not his whole family! We are not displacing them all because he’s a shitty person. Seriously, something very inconvenient and _not violent_ ,” he says. He was so not going to jail because of Oliver, that was just not worth his time and efforts.

“Slash his tires,” Laurel says.

“You suck at this, Laurel; we are not slashing his tires. We should just punch him in the face,” he says, not feeling like coming up with anything better than that.

“I thought we were going for non-violent,” Felicity says, raising an eyebrow.

“Well you guys aren’t coming up with anything good! Maybe we should do that shrimp thing…” he says, trailing off. Laurel and Felicity, of course, jump on board with the shrimp thing so they make plans to shrimp Oliver’s car.

*

“Why is there five shrimp rings in the fridge?” Joe asks, giving Barry and Iris suspicious looks.

“I like shrimp?” Barry tries. He hates shrimp; the food was easily one of his least favorites, right next to meatloaf and broccoli.

“You hate shrimp, Barry,” Joe says, frowning at him.

“Iris likes shrimp?” he says, making a face because he was very, very bad at lying.

“Iris also hates shrimp,” Joe says. Shit, right, she hated shrimp more than he did but she also thought broccoli was good so clearly she wasn’t quite right.

“Um,” he says, out of excuses. He casts Iris a ‘help me’ look but the asshole abandons him to the metaphorical sharks.

“Please tell me this has nothing to do with Oliver,” Joe says.

Oh, bad wording, Barry could work with that. “It has nothing to do with Oliver,” he says, and convincingly too. Technically it wasn’t a lie, the shrimp were all about Oliver’s _car_ , not his person, and therefore he was telling the truth.

Joe considers his answer for a few moments before he seems to accept that Barry was telling the truth and he walks away. “You _lied_ ,” Iris says, looking and sounding surprised. That was fair, he supposed, because his ability to lie was, at best, absolutely terrible.

“He asked if the shrimp had anything to do with Oliver, and they don’t, it’s his car that I’m targeting,” he points out, grinning.

Iris smiles wide, “that is so devious of you! Can I come shrimp the car?” she asks, wiggling her eyebrows at him.

“Are you going to sell me out later like you did that one time we both snuck out?” he asks. Iris, the asshole, had left him to fry when they had snuck out to a party last year and she successfully managed to sneak back in. He was not so lucky.

“It was one time, Barry, let it go. You got off on good behavior, I _never_ get off on goof behavior,” she says.

“That’s because when you get grounded you always seem to misbehave _more_ than when you aren’t. Speaking of, I deleted the messages from the school telling Joe that we got detentions, I am not being grounded again because we dared to speak twice,” he says. God, he hated his homeroom teacher, the guy was an absolute asshole. He was going to make it his personal mission in life to make sure every morning class he had for the rest of the year with him was absolute hell for the fuck of it.

“Semantics. Also great, I’ve been waiting to get in trouble for that but now I don’t have to worry about it because my baby brother fixed it,” she says, pinching his cheek.

“I am not your baby brother! You’re two weeks older!” he says, offended that she would refer to him as a baby. Two weeks hardly gave her the right.

“And my fourteen days makes me older and wiser,” she says, grinning. She hops off his bed and leaves, telling him that she was so in for shrimping Oliver’s car and to let her know when he was off to do that.

*

Twenty four hour coffee shops were the greatest thing known to man. Laurel had been nice enough to ‘borrow’ her dad’s car for their endeavor and Felicity had brought extra shrimp. Iris had brought her knowledge of cars and Barry brought his good looks and charm, plus his five shrimp rings. Despite having to sneak on and off of the Queen property it had been surprisingly easy, Barry knew the gate password so they had essentially walked in, stuffed shrimp, and then left.

Now they were sitting in a coffee shop with their drinks far away from the scene of the crime. Was that a crime? Stuffing someone’s hub caps with shrimp? He had no clue, but it wasn’t like it could be logically traced back to them. He was sure Oliver would put two and two together but the gate didn’t have cameras and he also knew what areas of the property the cameras pointed at so he avoided those too. Joe didn’t raise a fool, he knew what was up.

“So this is going to be embarrassingly anticlimactic for the next few days,” Laurel says.

“Actually it’s supposed to be pretty hot tomorrow, you might not even have to wait till Monday,” Iris says, grinning and eating her donut.

“I still think we should have slashed his tires,” Laurel says.

“But then the shrimp would have been useless,” Felicity points out.

“Still would have been more immediately satisfying,” Laurel mumbles. Barry had to agree but they weren’t slashing Oliver’s dam tires.

“I gave him like seven hundred dollars in late fees at the library yesterday for fun,” Felicity says, “but he’s rich so it was way less satisfying than it should have been,” she mumbles, looking unimpressed.

“I spread a rumor that he had herpes,” Barry says, frowning.

“Oh I helped spread that rumor and added syphilis!” Iris says excitedly.

“I slept with Tommy again and felt really bad because Oliver happened to walk in on us and that was not my intention and now I hope Tommy doesn’t think it was,” Laurel says.

“That had to be satisfying,” Barry says.

“It was, just a little, until I felt bad about Tommy. Also, Felicity, you are _so_ right about oral, Tommy should teach _lessons_ ,” she says, grinning.

“You all have a sex life, screw you guys. Barry killed any chance I had at a sex life when he showed Eddy baby pictures,” Iris mumbles.

“He would have waited until you were eighteen anyways, which isn’t long so shush. And I don’t have a sex life,” he point out. He wasn’t terribly disappointed by that though to be fair the last time he had a sex life ended horribly so maybe he was traumatized or something.

“You’re just denying yourself a sex life with Leo because you two won’t pull your heads out of your asses and get together,” Iris says, throwing a donut sprinkle at him.

He deflects the sprinkle, escaping with his life. “I am not denying myself anything, he probably doesn’t even like me,” he says.

“Wait, who’s Leo again?” Felicity asks.

“His boyfriend, and since you didn’t correct me when I called him that I’m going to assume that you are, in fact, dating,” Laurel says, grinning. He swore he befriended a bunch of demons or something because they were obviously all spawns of Satan.

“ _Oh_ , the cute guy from out first revenge plans meeting! Oh yeah he’s into you,” Felicity says, nodding like she had any clue what she was talking about. He was _not_. They were all just trying to make him feel better.

“You should ask him out,” Iris says, looking gleeful at such a prospect.

“I am not asking Leo out, I have fragile feelings right now and I don’t want them to be squished by rejection,” he says. Right now he was a delicate flower and he would like to remain at least somewhat un-trampled by this whole experience.

“He would so not reject you,” Laurel says, “I mean if _he_ didn’t correct that you two were dating then he clearly has feelings for you. Ask him out!” she says excitedly, bouncing around in her seat. He tries to resist with little to no success so eventually he resigns himself to telling them he’d think about it. That didn’t mean he had an plans of following through like, ever, even if Laurel did make a point about Leo not saying anything about the boyfriend thing.

*

He swore that Cisco and Lisa thought he was a fucking moron. They were tying, very unsuccessfully, to set him up with Barry, who was under the impression this was a group hangout thanks to the presence of Mick, who was watching this fucking disaster in glee. If he wasn’t half of the people his sister and her idiot boyfriend were trying to set up he’d probably find this fucking hilarious too but no. He didn’t get that privilege.

Barry, as usual, was adorably clueless to the whole thing and talking animatedly about something Laurel had done the last time they hung out while Cisco and Lisa broke their brains trying to figure out how to tell Barry without actually telling Barry. He and Mick share yet another look, which made that no less than five that night, before he has enough and decides to put everyone out of their misery. “Lisa and Cisco are trying, miserably, to set us up,” he says finally.

For a moment Barry looks confused, “set us up for what?” he asks and Mick fucking _cackles_ , the asshole.

“On a date, Barry,” he says bluntly.

Barry, predictably, looks over to Mick because if this was a double date why the hell was Mick there? “Wildcard,” Mick says, waving his hands around, “I like anarchy and this isn’t illegal.” Yeah, well he had certainly made this whole thing a mess.

“Oh.. kay?” Barry says intelligently, frowning.

“You two suck at this,” he tells Lisa and Cisco. Lisa immediately looks at Cisco, who resembles a kicked puppy so clearly he was the mastermind behind this shithive. No wonder it went horribly. He sighs, “alright fine, let’s settle this like a couple of mature humans. Barry, do you have any interest whatsoever in dating me?” he asks bluntly with no room for misinterpretation. He’s seen romcoms; he is not in for several months’ worth of hijinks or some other bullshit.

Barry looks like a deer caught in the headlights and settles for making a noise that sounded far too similar to The Grudge to be remotely cute. “Oh for gods sakes Barry, this isn’t an American History test, it’s a yes or no question. I’m not going to be offended either way,” he says.

“Actually I’m really good at history, I find memorizing dates soothing,” he says and of course he does.

Mick squints at him, “what the fuck is wrong with you?” he asks.

“Nothing I just like memorizing dates,” Barry says, offended.

“Dude that is pretty weird,” Cisco says.

“You find _math_ soothing, you can’t judge me,” Barry says, even more offended at Cisco than Mick.

“Okay, who cares about your weird habits? We all have weird habits, Lisa saves her hair for some reason, Cisco looks like a pug, Mick feels an intense need to piss his parents off for no reason whatsoever, and you think memorizing dates is soothing. Whatever, that doesn’t matter. So if we could avoid the romcoms tropes of funny hijinks and shenanigans while some big confession is being made that’d be great,” he says.

“You _save_ your hair? Why?” Cisco asks, taking all of two fucking seconds to derail the damn conversation again. He glares at Cisco for his efforts but Cisco is too busy being concerned about the hair.

“I don’t want people to make voodoo dolls with my hair,” Lisa says.

“Voodoo isn’t real,” Cisco says.

“Well I’m not taking my chances that the guy who finds _math_ soothing is wrong,” she says defensively.

He crumples up a napkin and shows it at them, “no one cares about your fucking hair. Barry, can I please get an answer before we return to the romcom hijinks and bullshit. I always did prefer the action movie route,” he says.

“Action movie route?” Barry asks.

“Yeah, you have a couple on screen, shits blowing up, they say ‘I love you’, there might be some fucking later, it’s straight forward and honest. There’s none of that ‘cute’ months of misunderstandings, hijinks, terrible plans made by friends to get the couple together, or any of that other shit. Just. To the point,” he says. He always had preferred honesty as a trait, something that was ironic considering he was from a family of criminals.

“Okay,” Barry says.

“Okay what?” he asks.

“I’ll go on a date with you,” he says.

He sighs, “Barry we are currently _on_ a date thanks to these two idiots, Mick is the fifth wheel,” he says.

“For the win!” Mick says in his own defense.

“Oh well, okay,” Barry says, “by the way Cisco you should know that I am horribly bad at reading situations. You probably should have just told me what you were up to instead of letting me fumble through a date without knowing it was a date. You guys are assholes,” he tells them. He was in full agreement with Barry’s assessment of his friend’s shit, and worse Cisco dragged Lisa into this mess.

Mercifully the rest of their date, if one could call it that, goes reasonably well. Mick continues to cause anarchy, but the couple a few tables away was the target this time, Cisco admits sheepishly to making a bet on his and Barry’s dating life, Barry manages to take Cisco for eighty percent, and then Oliver Queen shows up to ruin it all. “I _know_ it was you!” he yells helpfully at Barry, who looks lost.

“Me who did… what, exactly?” he asks.

“You fucking keyed my car!” he yells, waving his hands around.

Barry looks confused because he hadn’t actually had anything to do with that, he’d know, because it was him and Mick that took keys to the expensive car. And busted a taillight for good measure. “I didn’t do that, Oliver, and if you could stop yelling-”

“Like fuck you didn’t!” Oliver yells, cutting Barry off. Barry decides to cut his losses and tells Oliver to go outside because if he was going to yell the least he could do was go outside the establishment to do it.

Mick raises an eyebrow at him, “nothing says ‘revenge’ like a good old fashioned punch in the face,” he says as they watch Barry heard Oliver out.

“You want the honors?” he asks because Mick has waited literal years for this moment.

“Nah, I’ll let you have the honors this time,” he says, “go defend your boyfriend’s honor.” He grins because yeah, he’s been waiting a long time for this too but he didn’t know it until Mick let him seize the opportunity. He was a good friend, he’d have to steal him something to show his gratitude.

“Queen,” he says when he exits the building, stopping Oliver’s tirade on poor Barry, who looked like he had no clue what to do.

Oliver looks up just in time to receive a face full of his fist and he goes down easily, smacking his head off the cement as he lands flat on his back, “fuck you,” he says. Barry looks a mix between elated and horrified.

“Oh my god,” he says, deciding on horrified over elated, “Oh my _god_ ,” he says again, apparently changing his mind and going for elated. “That was awesome!” he says happily.

Barry asks later but he denies ever touching Oliver’s car.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, sorry an update took 80 years! This chapter is a bit shorter than the rest, but it's done! 
> 
> Warnings for abuse mostly, and gendered slurs.

Laurel was pretty pissed she wasn’t around to witness Oliver being punched in the face and he didn’t blame her, he’d be pissed if he hadn’t seen that either. Oliver had made some snippy comment about his father hearing about this, which had prompted Barry to call him Draco Malfoy because come on. That was just _begging_ for a snarky comment but Oliver hadn’t appreciated it. He had end up stumbling off back to his considerably scratched car to glare at him and Leo from there. Leo could deny it all he wanted but Barry knew he was the one that was responsible for that, or Mick, either way he was there. He lets it go though because he was viciously happy something Oliver loved suffered and it wasn’t a person so it was okay.

“Fuck _Laurel_ , I wish I was there!” Iris says excitedly. Poor Eddy looks massively confused over why his pseudo- girlfriend was so excited about some guy getting punched out.

“It was glorious,” Barry tells her because it totally was. He had _so_ wanted to punch Oliver himself but he wasn’t exactly the most physical of types, Iris used to regularly kick his ass and she like four inches shorter and a good twenty pounds lighter. She was also quick on her feet and a brawler versus Barry, who felt bad for killing flies let alone punching people. Still, Leo punching Oliver out was probably the best thing to happen to him in the last two years.

“Next time your life decides to get interesting let me know, yeah?” Iris says, raising an eyebrow.

“Sure, I’ll become a prophet and predict when people are going to punch Oliver so you can witness it,” he says sarcastically. Iris throws a wadded up tissue at his head, “oh Iris, nasty!” he says, fleeing the scene before he becomes the victim of more tissues being tossed at him. He had homework to do anyways and he probably should procrastinate any longer on doing it no matter how much he wanted to.

*

He’s somewhat surprised to find that Leo isn’t at school the next day but he doesn’t say anything about it because it wasn’t really his business anyways. Iris, however, has no tact so she asks Mick where he went.

Mick makes a face, “the fuck do I look like? His fucking keeper? I don’t know. If he decided to skip and leave my ass here to suffer I’m going to kick his ass though,” he says grumpily. Barry felt that, really, homeroom was hell and he truly resented the happiness the teacher seemed to exude when he noticed Leo wasn’t there. Total assbite.

He is, however, considerably surprised when Mick chooses to sit beside him in math though. “Don’t look at me like that, I’m not doing my own fucking math,” he says, sliding the paper of problems they were supposed to do over to him, “get cracking, Scarlet.”

“First, that’s only okay when Leo says it. Second, do your own homework,” he says, sliding the paper back.

“Haha, no,” Mick says, sliding the paper back.

“I’m not doing your homework,” he says, sliding the paper back again.

“Well neither am I,” Mick says, sliding the paper back.

“I guess we’re at a stalemate,” Barry says stubbornly, refusing to do Mick’s work for him.

“What is going on here?” the teacher asks.

“None of your fucking business,” Mick says in a snarky tone. He promptly gets kicked out of class and Barry sighs, picking up Mick’s paper because now he felt bad for getting the guy kicked out of class. At least the problems were easy, at least for him, everyone else Iris included seemed to be struggling. He never did understand how people found the subject so difficult but Iris assured him that math was the literal devil and the second it acquired letters it needed to be sent back to the hell from whence it came. She also insisted that math wasn’t real and was invented by people for no other reason than to watch the world burn. He didn’t have the energy to explain to her that no, math was not a social construction, it was legit and not the product of the devil.

At the end of class he hands in his and Mick’s problems, much to Iris’ annoyance because she had probably failed her math problems. “I’ve spent so much time explaining them to you, they aren’t that heard!” Barry says.

“For you! I don’t even know what calculus _is_ let alone why I decided to take it,” she says and Barry almost crawls into the trash can across the hall out of second hand embarrassment.

“Iris, calculus is-” he starts but Iris cuts him off.

“I googled it Barry, the definition was just words. There was no meaning, calculus isn’t real and it doesn’t matter if I fail it because I’m going into journalism, I decided,” she says.

He opens his mouth to question that but honestly there was just so much that he didn’t even know where to start with that. “I… calculus is real, Iris, and good for you for deciding what to do with your life!” he says enthusiastically. He figured she could send out applications now, he had already sent his out and was waiting to hear back and knowing that was making Joe anxious about Iris. She was fine, which they’ve both told him several times, but he didn’t seem content to listen. Iris was irritated with it but at least it didn’t land with her father on death row so at least her luck was better than his.

“I maintain that calculus is fake and that it needs to die,” she says and flounces off to her next class blissfully unaware of her ignorance. God, he was going to have to get Cisco on this so they could explain to Iris that math wasn’t fake. Actually Caitlin might do a better job of that, he’d talk to her.

*

It was pretty safe to say he wasn’t very fond of Wells, when he was younger he liked him just fine, but as he got older he realized the guy was a smarmy bastard. Lunch wasn’t supposed to turn up more interesting things than Caitlin trying to teach Iris what calculus was but then Mick decided to make things interesting for him. “Ten bucks,” he says, waving a ten around, “says you can get away with calling Wells a twat to his face.”

“You look pretty confident about this,” Barry says, “I’m pretty sure I won’t get away with it.”

“Ten bucks if you don’t, I see no downside,” Mick says, grinning.

“If I win you’re out ten bucks, how is that a win for you?” he asks, confused as to why Mick was so damn invested.

“Look, I’ve already earned an office trip today; I can’t do it so you have to. And even if, on the off chance I’m wrong, I still get to see the look on Wells’ face when someone calls his a twat. Win-win,” Mick says, “so take the fucking bet and call Wells a twat.”

Caitlin leans forward, “you need to do this, I need to see someone call him a twat, I _hate_ him. He failed my science project last year and it was way better than everyone else’s!” she hisses, still very pissed off about that. He was sure Wells would remember the fallout from that for years to come because Caitlin had harassed him for three weeks before she finally got a passing grade.

He’d consider turning the bet down but then Caitlin would come for his head so he sighs, “fine, I’ll call Wells a twat and when I get sent to the office I fully expect my compensation,” he says.

“Deal,” Mick says, grinning. They at least let him finish his lunch first, thankfully, before he gets stuck in the office once again for something stupid.

He manages to catch Wells on his way out, a small entourage behind him making him look even more like an idiot than he already did. “Wells,” he says and sighs as the guy turns around and smiles pleasantly at him. Of fucking course he’d smile right before he was about to be insulted. “You’re a twat,” he blurts unceremoniously, “and absolute twat,” he continues just to be sure he was heard. Cisco lets out a small ‘oooo’ behind him and he resists the urge to turn around and glare.

“And a total dildo,” Mick throws in, “and I say dildo instead of dick because you’re a fake ass bitch,” he says and Barry barely resists the urge to laugh at that. Cisco, Caitlin, and Iris feel zero need to hold back their laughter though and he totally resents them for it.

“Office, both of you,” Wells says, not impressed with this at all.

“You owe me ten bucks,” he mutters at Mick as they do the walk of shame, or lack thereof in Mick’s case, to the office.

*

He’s half asleep when his phone goes off, waking him from his almost-slumber. His body seems to be functioning ahead of his brain as he grabs his phone and unlocks the thing, releasing a barrage of light into his sensitive eyes. Frowning at the device he blinks rapidly as he adjusts to the light in his face so he could read the fucking text. For a moment he assumes its Oliver making some booty call request but then he remembers that right, they weren’t together. Thank god.

The text is from Leo of all people, asking if he was awake. Well, he was now, which was what he said but he puts an emoticon at the end to sound less bitchy. Or maybe that came across passive aggressive, hopefully not option two though.

_Never mind, go back to sleep_

Barry gives the phone an irritated look because of hell no, he did not get woken up at one thirty in the morning for a false alarm, thank you.

_No no, now I want to no y u txt_

At least Leo was trying to be nice, Oliver had just always assumed he was awake and ready to do whatever the hell he told Barry to. Which, no, that was not how things worked and he should have ignored a lot more texts from that asshat than he did.

_Can you meet me somewhere? The bridge?_

He frowns at the text but agrees, quietly getting out of the warm comfort of his bed because he was a good person, and people didn’t text this late for no reason. Sneaking out has been a habit of his for some time now, so getting out was easy and it didn’t result in him drawing attention to himself from sleeping parents thank god. He could do without a double grounding; he’d already been grounded for getting another detention for calling Wells a twat. It wasn’t his fault Wells was a total asshole, so he called him on it, big deal. But no, he was grounded for the next week. Iris had been nice enough to try and come to his defense but Joe didn’t go for it. Ugh. Sneaking back in might be an issue but he leaves that to worry about later because right now something must be going on.

It doesn’t take him long to get to the bridge, he was familiar with all the shortcuts that basically cut ten minutes of travel time. He finds Leo already there, perched where they had sat when he had happened across Barry at the bridge, “hey,” he says softly, sitting down.

Leo turns to face him and he had a black eye and a split lip and Barry’s stomach does an uncomfortable twist and flop thing that he could have done without. “I called Wells a twat today; I did not get away with it so your theory was wrong. But I did get ten bucks out of Mick so I mean clearly I’m still winning,” he says for lack of something better. He could say something about the black eye, plus the bruises Barry suspected were in other places, but he doesn’t. He used to fucking hate when people drew attention to Oliver’s abuse because he _knew_ that already, he wasn’t fucking stupid. He already dwelled on it all the time, thought he somehow deserved it; he didn’t need people to map it out for him.

He suspects that Leo was the same, or at least similar. Leo snorts and half smiles, “Mick told me, kudos for calling him out twice,” he says, looking amused.

“I wasn’t sure he heard me the first time so you know, gotta make sure,” he says. They lapse into silence and Barry leaves it, figuring what Leo wanted right now was someone there, not conversation or comfort. It was what he had always wanted but never really gotten, instead he got a bunch of unsolicited advice from well-meaning people who had no clue what they were talking about. They wanted to help, he knew, but they had no clue what they were talking about.

“Just ask,” Leo says finally, “I know you’re dying to.” He looks over at Barry, face tipped up a bit in defiance and yeah, Barry knew that look.

So he takes a breath and thinks for a moment. “I wasn’t going to ask, it isn’t my business and even if you did tell me everything, and that is a big if, what are either one of us supposed to do? I used to hate when people would give me a bunch of advice about Oliver like they knew what they were talking about because they didn’t. And I don’t know anything about… whatever this is, and I’m not going to pretend to. It won’t do anyone any good no matter how well meaning it is. I know you probably don’t want to talk about it but if you do I’ll listen,” he says and falls silent. There was no use filling the space with words no one had an interest in listening to so he doesn’t bother.

“Thanks,” Leo says quietly after a few beats of silence. Barry wanted to say that it was okay or something else reassuring but he knew how shitty that used to make him feel too because it wasn’t okay and he didn’t want to hear some bullshit ‘it gets better’ speech. He doubted Leo would care if it got better later because right now things were shit and holding up some vague time period where things weren’t as crappy did nothing to stop that. If anything Barry found that it made it worse because how long would he have to suffer before things got ‘better’? And if things were shit now ‘better’ didn’t look promising, it just looked less shitty and that wasn’t what anyone wanted.

So instead of saying something he links his fingers though Leo’s and squeezes gently. Leo squeezes back, holding onto Barry’s hand for dear life as if he’d fly away if he let go and he doesn’t say anything. That doesn’t matter because Barry was content to sit in silence.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a bit short (again) and the second hand embarrassment nearly had be dead, but a new chapter is here!

“Do you think Iris can actually take Mick?” Leo asks, eyeing Iris wearily. Mick at least had the good sense to eye her wearily too, probably because she didn’t look worried whatsoever and it was throwing him off.

“Iris is a pretty capable fighter,” Barry says, “she used to beat up my bullies before you came along to punch them out,” he says, grinning. Leo rolls his eyes fondly at him and laughs but they knew it was true. He totally took over Barry Protection Duty by accident and Barry, for one, was happy about that development. It was totally adorable and everyone else thought so too.

Mick and Iris circle each other twice before Iris just punches him in the face, no warning, no indication that she was about to strike, and poo Mick falls on his ass looking stunned. “The fuck, West?” he asks, tipping his head back and pinching the bridge of his nose to stop the healthy flow of blood that was now flowing out.

“Look, I don’t know what it is with guys and doing that weird circle each other leaning forward and backwards like a couple of idiot cobras but I have no patience for it. So I punched you,” she says in a tone that was far too cheery for this situation.

Leo covers his mouth and snickers a bit, amused by Iris’ reasoning. She had a point in Barry’s opinion, that cobra thing was weird as hell and he didn’t get it. But then he didn’t really understand the need for guys to beat each other up as some fucked up form of bonding either. Caitlin asked him and Cisco about it once and they told her that she asked the wrong guys because they didn’t get it either. They were more content to blow each other up in video games, at least if Caitlin and Iris weren’t around to do it for them. The two were way too good at video games considering they both had no real interest in playing them, which just pissed Cisco off because he had _hours_ into his games but Caitlin could pick up a controller and do better than him just pressing buttons. “Guess I didn’t need to be worried about Iris,” he says.

“She once knocked Woodward out in a single punch, I’ve learned to be less worried and more hiding behind her because I can’t fight for shit. I look like a flailing noodle,” he says.

“That’s true, he _does_ look like a flailing noodle, it’s hilarious,” Iris says. She was totally evil, laughing at his plight but she would claim that was what sisters were for. Sisters, he had decided, were evil creatures and Laurel agreed though she actually had reason to think her sister was evil. She still hadn’t given Sarah much of a chance to make things up to her but this was _Laurel_ , she had a nasty habit of holding grudges for far too long.

“I kinds wanna see that,” Mick says.

“You want me to punch you twice? Because I will punch you if you hurt Barry,” Iris says, valiantly defending his honor. She was sweet, really, but if she thought Barry was going to stand there long enough to get punched she was sorely mistaken. He was certain he could run faster scared than Mick could no matter the mood.

“I know you live,” Leo says, slinging an arm over Barry’s shoulder.

“You guys are sweet, really, but I will get punched by no one because I am very good at running and hiding,” he says. He wasn’t a moron, he knew when he was out of his depth and anything that involved punches meant he was toast. If it involved _science_ however, well, that he was good at. Really good at actually, far better than he needed to be to be a forensic scientist and that was fine by him because it meant he would get into the program for sure.

“Wimp,” Mick accuses.

“I accept that,” Barry says back. He’d rather be a wimp than punched in the face, thank you.

*

“Remember Ray?” Felicity says as if he would ever forget that vulture asshole.

“Unfortunately,” he says, “did he manage to steal himself another comic out from under our noses?” he asks.

“No, he asked me out,” Felicity says.

“Oh. Lame,” he says, earning a punch in the arm from Felicity. He whines what he thinks is an appropriate amount and Felicity calls him a drama queen, which, rude. He was not a drama queen; he was just hurt that she would cause him pain. “Fine, so you and vulture are dating? Get him to stay out of our comics,” he says.

Felicity sighs, “well, no, not at the moment. That’s why I wanted to talk to you, you always have really good advice and I figured you’d be able to help a girl out. I mean it’s only been like four seconds since I, well, _we_ , broke up with Oliver so isn’t this a little… soon?” she asks.

Barry shrugs, “maybe. It depends on you I guess, some people can move on right away and know how to make the next relationship work better and for other people it takes years. Either way while you distract Ray with your feminine charms I’m stealing the comics,” he says, earning another punch because Felicity was an asshole apparently.

“Distract Ray yourself, I want the comics,” she says. “But seriously, you don’t think this is… soon?” she asks.

“Like I said, it depends on you. I mean Laurel moved on before she technically broke up with Oliver and it seems to be working well for her. And I’m doing fine,” he points out though his relationship was still pretty fresh. Leo had been a bit distant, keeping to himself more than not but Barry knew the behavior well. He didn’t want to answer uncomfortable questions and he didn’t trust Barry enough not to ask them quite yet. He understood that and let Leo have breathing room because that was what he needed, when he felt like talking he’d come back.

“You are totally unhelpful,” Felicity says, rolling her eyes fondly at him.

“I am just ensuring that you don’t take my advice and then complain at me when things all go to hell,” Barry says, grinning. Felicity wouldn’t do that but it was still funny to see her reaction, which was extreme mock offense.

“Well now you don’t get credit of things don’t go wrong at all,” she says, which, _rude_!

“Fine, but I still want those comics before you or Ray go all vulture on them,” he says, fully prepared to fight. Leo had thought that was hilarious, his willingness to fight over a new comic but not for pretty much any other reason. It was hardly his fault that he was thin and nerdy and couldn’t fight for shit unless he had an actual goal aside from ‘kick the other guy’s ass’, which he didn’t consider a goal at all.

“No, I want the comics to myself!” she says, “if you want them then you’ll have to fight for them.” Well, if that was how it was going to be then fine, he would fight damnit.

“Fine, but when I win you don’t get to read them,” he says, sticking his tongue out at her.

“Please, as if you would win the fight, you look like a flailing noodle when you fight,” she says. Okay so that was true, but when they were duking it out over the next batch of comics that came in and he won he was so rubbing her nose in it for the next ever.

*

So Barry was a sappy person who loved the Jonas Brothers still, Leo didn’t have to die laughing over that fact. “I _love_ this song,” he says in his own defense. He would defend the Jonas Brothers with his _life_ okay, well, maybe not. They weren’t Nicki Manaj but still, he had a soft spot for his favorite boyband when he was thirteen, okay?

“Not… not much has changed but we live underwater?” Leo says between fits of laughter, “what the fuck?” he asks and starts laughing harder when that line repeats in the song. Iris is hovering in the doorway, Barry knew, because she was a freak and had some sort of hidden agenda he didn’t know about.

“It was obviously a joke,” Barry says, hands planted on his hips because _hello_ , that was a huge change and even the Jonas Brothers knew that.

“The only joke here is the Jonas Brothers,” Leo says, still snickering.

“I resent that, I loved them when I was thirteen. Now they sort of ended up my study music,” he says.

“Why, because listening to music this bad makes you want to cram ten times harder?” Leo asks and Iris lets out a sharp laugh, giving her position away.

“Would you get lost?” Barry asks, going over to the door to properly shoo Iris away from his bedroom.

“I’m _supervising_ ,” she says as Barry pushes her down the hallway toward her own room.

“I don’t ‘supervise’ you with Eddy, you go find some other form of entertainment that isn’t being a creepy voyeur,” he says.

Iris gasps, “I am not creepy!” she says, pushing Barry back.

“Are so, so go do something else with your time that doesn’t involve you being weird and interrupting _my_ time,” he says, pushing Iris towards her room. Iris pushes him back but goes mostly willingly, squinting at him as he goes.

He accepts her surrender and goes back to his own room, tossing himself on his bed beside Leo, “I love her but she is such a pain in my ass sometimes,” he says. Iris would argue that was what siblings were for but she was a terrible sibling so what would she know?

Leo snorts, “you are a hot mess, Scarlet, emphasis on the mess,” he says and Barry was offended, really.

“Emphasis on the ‘hot’, thank you very much,” he says, playing up his offended tone.

“Mm, haven’t got much evidence for that,” he says, grinning, clearly egging Barry on.

“Really?” he says flipping himself over and crawling closer to Leo, intentions unmistakable, “I think I can rectify that.”

Leo tilts his head to the side, smirking just a little, “we’ll see,” he says, eyes flicking down to Barry’s lips, betraying his actual thoughts.

This is, of course, when Iris throws the door open, “see, I leave you for three seconds and you’re pretty much in his lap. This is why I spy,” she says, crossing her arms and looking indignant. Barry and Leo exchange an irritated look and Barry decides fuck it.

He swings his leg over Leo’s hip and sits on his lap, glaring over his shoulder at Iris, “no I _am_ in his lap and you’re standing right there, wanna watch our make out session too?” he asks, fully prepared to follow through on that. Leo snorts and shakes his head, looking amused with this turn of events.

Iris, he swears to god, she considers sticking around but when Leo’s hands settle on Barry’s thighs she chickens out, slamming the door shut and making a run for it. “You think she would have stuck around?” Leo asks.

“If she wanted to be scarred for life,” Barry says. Iris knew him well; she knew full well that he’d follow through on that.

“You aren’t _that_ much of a hot mess,” Leo says, drawing his attention back to him. He doesn’t expect the intensity of the stare he gets when they make eye contact and maybe that’s why he doesn’t respond, or maybe it was the sudden desire to kiss that smirk off Leo’s face. Didn’t really matter either way, honestly.

For a moment they stare at each other intensely, like one of those weird movie scenes where the love interests stare passionately into each other’s eyes like a couple of twits except it turned out that was a legit thing people did and Barry didn’t know about it until now. They both, he thinks, move at the same time, probably having the same idea only their heads collide instead of their lips. Barry rubs his forehead, “ouch,” he mumbles.

Leo sighs, “of course,” he mumbles, “because we can’t stop with the fucking romcom hijinks. I am so sorry,” he says.

Barry shrugs, “that’s alright. Joe always gave me some weird advice about your first kiss with someone not being perfect. He always said that they should be nervous enough to screw it up and now I think I might have got it through my thick skull with a little help from yours,” he says, earning a laugh for his efforts.

“That’s the fucking dumbest advice I’ve ever heard,” Leo says, brushing his fingers across his jaw, gently pulling Barry’s face closer and kissing him in a far more gentle way than heads colliding. Barry smiles into the kiss, leaning into it happily. It was short, too short for his liking, but sweet and it left him wanting more.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright so I think I'm only going to add one more chapter after this one, I feel like this story has come to it's natural end but I have also been writing 3 stories at once and I have been stretched pretty thin with school work and other stuff. So Maybe I'm wrong? Or I might just end it here. We will see.

This time he hadn’t even done anything and he had been sent off to the office. At least he had company in the form of Mick and Leo, who were arguing about who had the better insults when he shows up. “What’d you do, Scarlet? I was under the impression you were a full time saint when we weren’t around,” Leo says, dropping an arm over Barry’s shoulders when he sits in the chair beside him.

“I am not a full time saint ever, and I didn’t tell Hartley he was about to blow himself. Don’t worry, he’s fine, unfortunately,” he mumbles under his breath. That, he thinks, is what got him sent to the office because he had said that in class too. It wasn’t like he didn’t say anything when he set the stuff up wrong but he got a snappy response so Barry took a step back and let Hartley mix things wrong and one of the chemicals reacted badly, as Barry knew it would.

Mick gives his dramatic condolences on Hartley’s health and asks how it happened so Barry gives him the dumbed down version. “You know I’m an idiot but you don’t talk to me like I’m stupid, I like that about you,” Mick says and Leo rolls his eyes.

“So the teacher, for all intents and purposes, sent you to the office for doing nothing?” Leo asks.

“Pretty much,” Barry says, “I guess at least I have good company minus Mick.”

“Oh fuck you, Scarlet,” Mick says, flipping him off. Barry flips him off back and then they both get busted and told off by the office staff.

“Has anyone noticed how _preachy_ they are?” he asks. He hadn’t noticed until he landed here every other day and then it was ‘bad influence this’ and ‘real world’ that and a bunch of other crap they thought was seriously going to influence them to behave. Honestly Barry was tempted to be an asshole just because he didn’t like being talked down to by a bunch of old women who thought shaming people was a good method of getting teens to cooperate.

Leo raises an eyebrow, “you _just_ noticed that? Honey, we’ve known that for years. These god damn old ladies have been bitching at us since we got to this hell hole labeled ‘school’, at least until Mick told them his dream job was a high powered criminal, then they gave up,” Leo says. He snickers too, and so does Mick, which makes Barry wonder if that was an actual thing that happened.

“One, don’t call me ‘honey’, it sounds weird coming from you. And two, oh my god no wonder you guys get into so much trouble, every time I get a stupid lecture from the office ladies I want to set the school on fire while looking them dead in the eye so they know I’m not following their instructions,” he says. Like a cat, he decides, but he doesn’t because he had no desire to join his father in Iron Heights.

“Exactly,” Mick says, “adults are dumb, I don’t care that my being eighteen means I am one technically, I will not accept that I am an adult until I pay my own bills. And my parents are rich so that’ll be never,” he says. They all sit there and bicker about Mick’s lack of life goals though they all had considerably different stances. Leo thought Mick would make a terrible criminal, which Barry agreed with, but he figured Mick could actually be successful if he grew some patience and subtlety, like Leo. He is informed that Mick’s ability to be a criminal was probably going to end as successfully as his attempts to burn everything down in like four seconds in grand theft auto. Generally unsuccessful was the impression Barry got.

Eventually some office lady that is unfortunately not Patty decides to deal with them. Mick gets an eye roll, she doesn’t even bother to ask Leo anything, he just gets awarded a detention, which, that was not how things were supposed to work. Barry though, he gets unsolicited relationship advice. “I know you don’t really think you deserve much, with that Oliver thing, but I think you can do better,” she says, giving Leo a distasteful look.

Barry’s eyebrows shoot up, “first off I am fucking delight and I know it, Oliver might have screwed some things up for me but I still have self-confidence thank you. And two, you’re on like marriage number five; you are _not_ qualified to be giving relationship advice, lady. So maybe you should take your ignorant opinions on people you don’t even know and throw them in the trash with your previous marriages,” he says and Mick fucking _loses_ it laughing.

“Holy fuck, Barry Allen is fucking savage!” he says, laughing loudly and earning a reprimand for his noise level.

Leo gives him a slow smile, “thanks,” he says.

Barry perks up, “no problem! I mean you defend my honor and as bad as an influence as people might think you are you’re nowhere near as bad a choice as that hideous sweater vest,” he says, gesturing to the terrible vest the irritating office aid was wearing. Leo laughs quietly, shaking his head while Mick doubles over, not bothering to hide his amusement. This leads to them all getting separated, and Barry earning another detention, but it was totally worth it.

*

Caitlin looks hilariously offended, almost as offended as Lisa and that was saying something. “I’m going to bunch that bitch out,” Lisa says and Cisco manages to catch her wrist just before she successfully launches herself out of her seat.

“If we could refrain from that it would be appreciated, just do what normal people do and be a passive aggressive asshole. Seriously, every time my fuck head brother says something looks good on him I make sure to spill something that will stain on his outfit. Take that,” Cisco says, grinning. He had become the master of petty revenge and his brother was the primary target, mostly because they were on terrible terms. For whatever reason Cisco’s family favored his brother and they never really did acknowledge his genius, which made no sense to Barry.

Lisa, however, does not look satisfied, “fine, I’ll break her nose and watch the blood stain her hideous sweater vest or whatever it was that Barry insulted,” she says. Cisco sighs and releases her, apparently coming to the conclusion that she was not going to be controlled. Lisa stays put though and when she gives Barry a shrewd look he half wishes she decided to punch the secretary out. “You though, thanks for saying something, I like you. For now,” she says ominously and he gladly shifts so that he’s closer to Leo for protection purposes.

“That’s not ominous at all,” Barry says sarcastically.

Cisco looks confused, “that actually wasn’t ominous though,” he says. He was weird because he was oddly afraid of Leo, but Lisa? No fear there and Barry thought he had this situation totally backwards. Lisa was definitely more frightening than her brother and Cisco was not clueing in.

“Oh honey, you’re blinded by love,” Caitlin says, patting Cisco’s forearm. “But in the spirit is Cisco’s petty revenge idea I vote that we go screw up the power switches on her car windows. First we make sure the windows are half open, every single one, and then we ruin the wiring so they can’t go up or down and hope it rains,” she says in a tone that was far too cheery. Lisa considers it for a moment before asking Caitlin if she had the knowhow to do such a thing. Caitlin tells her that yes, she was a genius when it came to anything science, literally she’s been tested, so she knew what needed to be done.

“Guys,” Cisco says, giving the two of them looks as they planned out their revenge, “ _seriously_?”

“She insulted Barry, she needs to suffer,” Caitlin says. Lisa nods along but they all knew she cared more about the secretary insulting Leo than him.

“I’m pretty sure Barry handled it, guys,” Cisco says.

“Not well enough, and while we’re at it we need to plan real revenge for Oliver. Glitter bombs? Weak,” Caitlin says and she and Lisa start planning that out too. Poor Cisco looks horrified when Lisa brings up castration and Leo quickly throws in that he was for that idea. Barry tells them that they were, under no circumstances, to _castrate_ poor Oliver. That was a bit much and he was satisfied with his glitter bombs, thank you. According to Laurel the shrimp had gone wrong in all the right ways and Tommy now refused to go anywhere near Oliver’s car and Oliver, no matter how hard he tried, couldn’t find the source of the stench. Ha, take someone home in _that_ , Oliver.

“Remind me to never get in her bad side,” Leo says after Caitlin lists off like five more violent ends for Oliver.

“Yeah, she can be pretty brutal,” Barry says. Not always, but when people she cared about were threatened or hurt in some way she was not someone you wanted to piss off. He was surprised she held off on her Oliver revenge for so long considering, but that might have been because harming Oliver in any way before would have harmed Barry and she didn’t want that. But he had moved past that now and despite the resistance of a select few people, namely Joe, who thought he had moved on too fast everyone was happy for him.

He understood what Joe was saying, that he should take time, but he had taken time and time again all throughout his relationship with Oliver. He was never blind to the fact that he was being strung along, he just went with it for a bit and then he just got tired of the games. Besides, it wasn’t like he hadn’t had time to himself after; he just happened to have half transitioned into a new relationship at the tail end of his last one. At that point he had barely been interested in Oliver, and Leo wasn’t quick to make a move either. When Barry asked him about that he told him that he was more than aware of the effects of an abusive relationship on people, he hadn’t wanted to contribute to Barry’s problem even by accident. That answer had convinced Barry that he hadn’t made a stupid decision in haste but Joe, as usual, wasn’t listening.

His friends continue to discuss revenge on Oliver while Cisco watches in fascination and horror, especially when Mick shows up and pitches his horror movie level plans. The real gem was when Ronnie hesitantly walks over and Caitlin clears a space for him beside her. The look on Cisco’s face was hilarious when Ronnie wraps an arm around Caitlin and the two start chatting casually like this was a regular thing, which it was but Cisco didn’t know that. Cisco’s facial expressions are even better when he learns that all his teasing Caitlin about Ronnie had been useless because they had been dating for months.

“Look, I am just saying you betrayed me,” Cisco says, “this is like… fraud or something.” Lisa snorts and rolls her eyes but she watches in amusement as the two bicker.

“If you think this is fraud you are way too invested. Go pay attention to your own relationship,” Caitlin says primly.

Cisco makes an offended noise, “I do pay attention to my own relationship, thanks! I love Lisa,” he says offhand, clearly not paying attention to his works.

Lisa looks shocked for a moment before she seems to process what Cisco just said, “did… you just say you loved me?” she asks and Cisco gets a sudden deer-in-the-headlights look.

“Uh. That depends on how you feel about that,” he says finally.

For a moment Lisa doesn’t say or do anything and Barry can practically see Cisco making plans to flee the country, “I love you too, Cisco,” she says and kisses him gently.

“Ugh, great, we have to keep it. I’m not buying him Christmas presents,” Leo says.

Mick snorts, “who the fuck _buys_ Christmas presents? Five finger discount, get with the fucking program,” he says. Ronnie looks confused so Caitlin starts explaining Mick, which wasn’t going well if Ronnie’s continuing confusion was any indication.

Cisco, at least, looks incredibly relieved, “thank god, I almost thought I was going to have to move to Antarctica,” he says.

“Why wouldn’t you go somewhere warm? Why suffer?” Lisa asks.

“I like the cold, I don’t know why everyone hates it so much,” Leo says.

“That’s because you’re dead inside, like winter,” Mick says.

“That’s terrible, he’s not dead inside,” Barry says, “I think he’s pleasant.”

“Do not ever use the word ‘pleasant’ to describe me ever again,” Leo says, “I have a reputation and I will not have your saintly ways ruining it.”

“Fine, you’re lovely,” he says. He’s rewarded with the most dissatisfied and annoyed look he’s ever seen on Leo’s face and he laughs.

“You’re the one who decided to date the Virgin Mary,” Lisa points out.

“Actually he’s just Mary,” Caitlin says and Ronnie snorts, shaking his head.

“Thank you for that, I figured my sex life was known but I guess not,” he says. Also he didn’t want to get pregnant with gods child, that was weird, even more so because he did not have the right parts for that. Where would the baby go?

“Saints don’t get sex lives,” Lisa says.

“Well I’m not a saint and I am satisfied with my sex life, thank you,” he says.

“You actually don’t have one at the moment,” Leo says, “got something to tell me?”

Barry sighs, “you get the point,” he says, “don’t be an ass. I do not have the energy to pull an Oliver, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even _have_ a refractory period. Seriously, Felicity and I did the math once, Ray was freaked out.” He had asked why they were so interested in the answer and they both answered ‘for science’ at the same time so he learned to just accept that he didn’t understand them sometimes. On the plus side he stopped acting as a vulture to steal comics when he and Felicity started fighting over them. That was probably because the guy who owned the store probably got sick of teens starting fights in the store but still, there was minimum squabbling now.

“I can see why Ray might have been freaked out,” Leo says, “but consider travel time. Boom, refractory period.”

“Okay but who wants to have that much sex? I mean seriously keeping up with three people must be a hassle at some point, I’d just be tired,” Barry says. He and Felicity made a schedule and that hadn’t even included Laurel and he was tired just looking at it. Felicity too and her sex drive was higher than his so that just proved Oliver was like a robot or something, seriously, he was impressed with the guy’s ability to keep up.

“From what I understand the guy’s dick was the only thing that was desirable about him so like… maybe he was trying to distract you with a good fuck or something,” Ronnie suggests.

Barry snorts, “if he wanted to distract me with his dick he should have left it strictly to the actual body part instead of jamming most of it into his personality,” he mumbles.

“Amen,” Cisco says. Lisa rolls her eyes fondly at him and Leo snorts, shaking his head. It wasn’t Barry’s fault Oliver was such a dick and really, he hoped that at some point Oliver stopped being such an ass but it didn’t really look like a character change was in his immediate future. At least he was hot, not that that made up for much but like… maybe if he was gagged or something he’d be more bearable.

*

Once again Barry and Iris were in the hot seat, “you two have been called into the office _four_ times this week? How come this is the only call I’ve gotten,” Joe asks. Iris and Barry exchange a look because they both sucked at lying and neither of them were willing to risk telling Joe something other than the truth lest they get caught. Truthfully they had deleted the messages before Joe got them so as far as he knew no one ever called.

“No idea,” Iris says, eventually taking the plunge.

“That’s a lie,” Joe says, calling her on her shit right away because really, they just traded a good minute long stare that indicated they knew something that he didn’t.

“Prove it,” Barry says, taking a card from Leo’s book. He deleted the calls from the phone logs too because he wasn’t a moron, he wasn’t looking to get caught in a lie.

For a moment Joe looks surprised because Barry wasn’t usually the rebellious type, at least not in this particular way. “Fine,” he says and takes off. Barry prays to whatever deity might exist elsewhere that he remembered to throw out the fucking phone bill because that had the calls logged on it and that would be the first place Joe would go, not the electronics. Shame he didn’t grow up in the digital age.

Sure enough Joe comes back with a phone bill and he doesn’t look impressed, “there are _fourteen_ calls from the school!” he says.

“Give me that,” Barry says, fully prepared to lie his ass off and hope to hell it was convincing. Joe hands him the bill and he notices right away the dates are off, “well first of all this bill is from last month. And the calls are me calling home from the school because Iris has the memory of a sieve and she needed me to bring her homework home. I called from the school because my phone died so,” he hands back the bill, “that proves nothing.”

Iris looks like she just witnessed the second coming of Jesus because he did it, he fucking _did it_. He lied convincingly and even Joe looks surprised. Joe takes a look at the date, “oh, I guess the dates were wrong. You’re still grounded though, both of you,” he says and they groan because Barry totally thought he saved them being grounded.

Joe dismisses them and they do the walk of shame up the stairs so they could morn their freedom in their rooms. “You _lied_ ,” Iris says once they’re out of ear shot, “and it was _believable_.”

Barry grins, “Leo taught me a thing or two,” he says happily. Mick had tossed in a few of his own tips too, for fun, and he had been happy to take in the information.

“Leonard Snart is a fantastic influence and I hope he gives you more tips in the future because that was awesome,” Iris says. It was a testament to how much time he now spent with Mick and Leo that his first reaction was to think that that was awesome in a ‘suburban kid disobeys parent’ kind of way, not a truly badass way. But he lets Iris have her fun because who was he so crap on her suburban disobedience?

He tosses himself on his bed as he gets a text from Leo.

_Grounded?_

First off he was personally offended that Leo could predict his lack of freedom.

_Yeah_

He guessed that he could like… sleep more or something. He had no homework because he was one of those freaks that worked about twelve times better under pressure so end-of-semester crunch time was actually the time he was the best functioning. Better than Caitlin, who needed to destress badly, though Ronnie was thankfully on that, or Cisco, who had another accident with his cold gun. Barry thought that he should give up on it but Cisco insisted it was badass. Leo agreed with Barry and Mick wanted the reverse because a gun shooting flames was apparently cool to him. Cisco was totally debating on making one, Barry could practically see it too and that was the worst part. Mick Rory should not have a flame shooting weapon; he’d use it for evil.

_Sneak out to meet up?_

He isn’t even done reading the message before he’s got a sweater.

_Hell yeah._


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My goal was to finish 2 out of three stories by the end of the month and this one seemed like the logical place to start so here y'all go, have the final chapter :)

_One Year Later_

Barry is curled up on the couch with his forensics text trying to figure his homework out while Cisco, Caitlin, and Iris complain about their roommates. “Seriously,” Caitlin says, “they’re _slobs_ and if I have to pick up one more dirty pair of underwear up off the living room table I will scream.”

“At least you’ve avoided racial slurs,” Cisco says, making an unimpressed face.

“I haven’t,” Iris says, “and I’ve had the underwear problem so clearly I win.”

“I should have moved in with Ronnie,” Caitlin says, clearly kicking herself for panicking over moving in with him now. She had come to Barry for advice like everyone these days, he swore he should have gone to school to be a therapist at this point, and she had been freaking out so much he told her to hold off. It was pretty clear she wasn’t ready to take that step, even if Ronnie was, though to be fair he was far more of a risk taker where Caitlin was calculating and safe but still. Obviously living with strangers did not pan out well for her, or the rest of his friends.

“I should have pulled a Mick and decided to freeload off Barry and Len,” Iris says.

Mick, who was currently lounging in the chair half asleep, rolls his eyes and snorts, “please, as if you could pull of being as lazy as me,” he says.

“That’s actually a fair point,” Iris says, “I hate doing nothing.”

“Yeah well, Mick pays rent so we can’t complain,” Leo says, grinning at them from the kitchen.

“I have found his underwear on my pillow so I can and will complain,” Barry says, horrified that he should ever have to tell another human being to keep their underwear _off_ his pillow.

“Suck it up,” Mick mumbles. Barry was deeply offended that people thought he was seriously going to do this because no, that is not right.

“Better than living with three assholes who think it’s fun to screw all your projects up,” Cisco says, “I am tempted to use the cold gun, it has such a bad reputation that no one would even question how I managed to flash freeze three separate rooms,” he says.

“Oh give it to me next, if my asshole roommates want to be cold hearted bitches I’ll make sure their rooms match,” Caitlin says and Barry snorts. Caitlin has been spending too much time with Mick, he thinks, but then so has he. Very quickly after starting classes in university he was known for being _the_ sass master. Two weeks after that he got more of a reputation for being a badass even if it wasn’t true, he just learned how to pick locks from Leo and they needed the lab ASAP. He was also significantly better at all things science than his classmates and they had noticed, so now they all suckerfished themselves to his side for studying purposes.

“This is why I didn’t go to university,” Leo says, glaring Iris down until she moves so he could sit beside Barry. Aww. “Too much trouble, also I’m fucking poor,” he says.

“I’m pretty sure my parents have finally given up on me being a lawyer, pretty sure if you seem like a suitable replacement they might pay for tuition,” Mick says. Oh that had been priceless, watching Mick fight with his parents about his career trajectory, or lack thereof. They had some pretty high hopes for the guy considering he’s never given them a reason to care and it would have been sweet if it wasn’t to the point where they flat out couldn’t see Mick past their own ideas of what their son should be. Mick handled it with all his typical grace and charm though, laughing off his parents’ assumption that he would ever be what they wanted him to be and slamming the door in their faces.

“Fuck that,” Leo says, “I’m not wasting my time being a lawyer, I argue with Barry for free.”

“Pineapple on pizza is a completely acceptable food choice!” Barry says, earning grossed out looks from everyone in the room, even _Mick_ for gods sakes. He has never felt so betrayed.

“Pineapple on pizza is the reason for overpopulation,” Leo says, “it is disgusting and should be eradicated from history.”

“You are so dramatic, it is not that bad, you just need to try it,” Barry says in his own defense.

“I have tried it, that’s the problem. Pizza is a junk food, Barry; fruit does not go on junk food. And honestly to add insult to injury it isn’t even a _good_ fruit. They burn my mouth,” Leo says, wrinkling his nose.

Cisco frowns, “pineapples aren’t supposed to do that, I think you might be allergic to them,” he says.

“Fucking great, pineapples are now banned from this apartment because I’m allergic to them. And don’t think you can eat your nasty pineapple pizza elsewhere and come back here to kiss me with that mouth, I’ll know,” he says and Barry didn’t actually doubt that. Leo had freakishly good senses, actually Lisa did too. Sometimes he and Cisco compared them for fun but it always ended in them arguing about why the other one didn’t admit that their respective significant other was _obviously_ the better sibling.

“I second that, pineapples are the product of the fucking devil,” Mick says, “which is probably why my freak family loves them so much.”

“Okay you know what, I don’t shame you for liking Keeping up With the Kardashians,” Barry says.

“The Kardashians didn’t cause poverty,” Leo says.

“Oh my god, pineapples on pizza did not cause poverty, I can’t believe I have to explain that to a grown man,” he says, throwing his hands up in frustration. Caitlin and Cisco were laughing their asses off and Mick and Iris were exchanging ‘seriously?’ looks. Okay first of all he has had to listen to Iris and Eddy argue over some truly weird shit, and Cisco and Lisa _still_ argue over whether or not voodoo was real so they had no place to talk.

“Did so,” Leo says, “see? Lawyer skills acquired, and I learned the laws by breaking them,” he says, snickering.

“Ugh, yeah I got like four snotty comments yesterday about your criminal activity so I reminded my asshole classmates that _I’m_ the one with the skills to break into labs as needed and I learned that from you so they should probably keep their elitist bullshit to themselves. Also Madeline’s hair is so hideous it should have its own talk show so it can tell everyone what life that ugly looks like,” Barry says, “it should also be illegal and Madeline did not like it when I told her that.” Actually she flipped shit but mostly because everyone else nearly died laughing. Four people nearly wet themselves laughing and his sass mastery struck once again.

Caitlin nearly chokes on her drink when she start laughing and Cisco actually does choke. “Nice,” Leo says, nodding in approval, “Madeline’s the one that said I looked like a Prison Break character, right?” he asks.

Barry makes an irritated noise, “yeah, and she only said that because he knows you’ve been arrested and I resent that. Also I do _not_ look like a Glee character; I look nothing like Grant Gustin, she needs her eyes checked,” Barry says. Sebastian was a total asshole too; he didn’t look like that guy!

“Actually I _do_ kind of look like that Prison Break character, and you do like look like that Glee guy. And you can sing, which makes your shower singing _way_ more tolerable than Mick’s,” Leo says, looking amused. His classmates didn’t get that either, Leo’s constant ‘freshly murdered someone’ face but that’s because they couldn’t see past the obvious shield he put up to keep people out. It wasn’t his fault they were blind and he wasn’t going to clue them in. He did, however, shut down any notions that _Oliver_ was the better option because no.

From what Barry had gathered from Laurel he had improved somewhat but that was because Sarah punched him in the face. He wasn’t totally sure how that went, neither was Laurel because Sarah wouldn’t tell her, but after that incident he seemed to have given up on his assholery a little. Sarah and Laurel were getting along too, minimally, but only because Nyssa had noticed that Laurel’s anger desperately needed an outlet and she offered to teach her how to fight. She was good too, like _really_ good, Barry wouldn’t fuck with her and Nyssa was even better. But their mutual love for Nyssa seemed to have brought them together somewhat.

“I don’t look like the guy from Glee, and you do not look like the Prison Break guy, Mick kind of looks like one of those Prison Break characters, though,” he says, “and my singing is fabulous. Ask anyone who had to listen to karaoke with Caitlin and I last Saturday,” he says, giving Caitlin a look and she groans, hiding her face.

“And Ronnie was so nice about me being wasted too, he put pajamas on me and tucked me it, it was so cute. He even made me breakfast in the morning and he wasn’t even mad when I threw it up,” she says shamefully.

“Better than Lisa hungover, I thought she was going to murder me, never _ever_ let me convince her to get drunk ever again,” Cisco says. Iris points out that they’re all underage and they were happy to point out that she had also partaken in underage drinking too so she couldn’t judge, thanks. She still tries, and fails, to argue moral high ground.

*

Barry drops down beside Leo on the fire escape, happily shimmying closer to leach body warmth. “Do you have a problem with that, my criminal activity,” he says in a distasteful tone.

He shrugs, “not really, you only got caught because Mick makes a terrible criminal,” he says, “besides, I know you’ve been saving money for Lisa to go to college.” That had been a weird situation, when they had ended up moving in together because Leo hadn’t been keen on leaving Lisa behind and from the little he’s told Barry he could see why. Lisa though, she had made her own plans long ago and was currently staying with a friend instead of her asshat father. He hadn’t taken well to both of his kids fleeing the scene but he didn’t seem content to let them know that with Barry standing right there, which was why he was there to begin with. Abusers didn’t much like other people knowing they’re abusers.

Leo looks surprised, “how did you know that?” he asks.

“Because I know you, and I’m not an idiot, I put two and two together pretty quickly,” Barry says.

Leo huffs out a laugh and wraps his arm around Barry, “sometimes I forget how well you know me,” he says. He got that, Leo had spent years building up a wall between himself and others and it had caught everyone by surprise when Barry had made it past that wall without even trying.

“Sometimes I forget that you aren’t used to people knowing you,” he says quietly. It had to be lonely, Barry thought, to only have a handful of people know anything about you, to care. But he was also considerably extroverted, people energized him and exhausted Leo, so maybe he didn’t mind.

“I have plenty of people who know me now. Honestly if someone would’ve told me two years ago that I would regularly meet with Iris West of all people for lunch to discuss our mutual love of Barry Allen I probably would have punched that person. Then I happened to run into you one night walking home from work and somehow ended up starring in a bad rom com,” he says. Barry rolls his eyes, Leo and his damn hatred of rom com movies. Sometimes Barry and Mick conspired to make Leo suffer and rented the most disgustingly lovey-dovey movie they could find so make Leo watch it. But then Mick and Leo teamed up to make Barry suffer with horribly gory horror flicks so he thought they were even.

“Rom coms are not the devil, Leo, some are even good. And I feel that, two years ago I was weirdly obsessed with Oliver and though I deserved the crappy treatment I got. Also I barely had a clue who you were and then I ran into you that one time walking home from work and everything changed, thankfully for the better. According to Laurel Oliver still has yet to figure out that we shrimped his car,” he says, grinning.

Leo laughs, “to this day my favorite memory is of you laughing so hard you woke yourself up because you had a dream that Oliver was on a show called ‘shrimp my ride’,” he says. Barry bursts out laughing because that had to be the best Oliver related dream he had ever had, and it made all the crappy ones go away. Probably because Leo had looked so hilariously confused when Barry finally gained enough control over himself to tell him why he was laughing so hard. “I can’t believe that you laughed for a solid hour at that,” Leo says.

“It was funny!” Barry says, defending his own honor.

“It wasn’t that funny,” Leo says, “but your reaction? That was hilarious, and it made the nightmares go away so I guess your brain’s lame joke paid off.”

“You know about those?” he asks because he hadn’t told anyone about the nightmares.

“‘Course I do, I’m not exactly a stranger to abuse induced nightmares,” Leo points out. Right, yeah his had been far more difficult to hide because he’d be irritated for days afterwards, and distant. Barry was just shaken but he got over it.

“Yeah but you had it way worse than I did,” he says. It wasn’t like Oliver ever hit him or anything, not like Leo’s shitbag of a father.

“It isn’t a competition; things affect people in different ways. I have no clue how you didn’t know I knew about the nightmares though. It was pretty obvious that something was wrong when you’d jump if Mick raised his voice, or avoid me like the plague if I looked even remotely irritated, and you’d avoid your friends too because you didn’t want them to know something was wrong. Just because you don’t have physical evidence of the abuse doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect you as much as it does me,” he says. Barry curls into Leo’s side, placing his head on his shoulder. He always knew what to say, what Barry needed to hear.

“I know you guys are like, having a moment, but I want grilled cheese and you two banned me from the kitchen so I guess someone else has cook,” Mick says, sticking his head out of the window that lead to the fire escape.

“Fuck you, make your own grilled cheese and stop ruining our moment,” Leo says, throwing an empty water bottle at Mick’s head. He laughs and goes back inside, presumably to ruin the kitchen.

“You’re going to regret that,” Barry says. The last time Mick attempted the culinary arts they almost died and that wasn’t even a joke.

“I’ll be fine,” Leo says. To his credit he lasts almost five minutes before Mick swears loudly and Leo all but flies through the window to save the apartment.

**Author's Note:**

> [My writing Tumblr](https://tenspencerriedplease.tumblr.com/)


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